Romney Hopes To Win 2 More States

ST. CHARLES, Missouri (AP) — Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, looking to extend his winning streak in the race for the presidential nomination on Tuesday, focused on abortion, religious freedom and gay marriage in an intensified effort to win over social conservatives as caucuses were held in Minnesota and Colorado.

Romney’s main rival, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, mounted no significant campaign in either state, looking ahead to primaries elsewhere. That left the two second-tier candidates, former Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul, as Romney’s only opposition.

While Romney prevailed in both Minnesota and Colorado in 2008 — in a race eventually won by Sen. John McCain — the Republican party has since become more conservative in both states as the anti-tax tea party movement spread.

Romney, despite his string of victories in the state-by-state nominating process, has struggled since 2008 to convince some cultural conservatives that he’s conservative enough, fueling predictions of a long, hard-fought battle for the right to challenge President Barack Obama in November. The former Massachusetts governor, who runs as the Republican most likely to defeat Obama, is still trying to establish his credentials among social conservatives suspicious of a one-time moderate who backed abortion rights.

Romney attacked the Obama administration’s recent decision to require Catholic organizations to provide contraceptive aids in some circumstances and later pounced after a federal appeals court ruled that a voter-approved ban on gay marriage in California violated the Constitution.

“Remarkably under this president’s administration there is an assault on religion — an assault on the conviction and religious beliefs on members of our society,” Romney, a Mormon, told supporters during his only campaign event before voters caucus and results are known.

Romney’s shift from economic to social issues came as his campaign prepared for a weak showing Tuesday. Campaign political director Rich Beeson issued a memo to reporters that said Romney won’t win every contest.

Santorum, long an outspoken figure on social issues, hopes conservative voters will help him finish strong on Tuesday. He campaigned more aggressively this week than any of the other contenders, and he spent the day hopscotching from Colorado to Minnesota to Missouri in hopes of nailing down a victory in one of the states.

There were 37 Republican National Convention delegates at stake in Minnesota and 33 more in Colorado. Romney began the day the leader in the delegate chase, with 101 of the 1,144 needed to capture the nomination. Gingrich had 32, Santorum 17 and Paul nine.

In addition, Missouri held a non-binding primary on Tuesday. The state picks its delegates at caucuses next month.

Santorum campaigned aggressively in all three states holding votes Tuesday, seeking a breakthrough to revitalize a campaign that has struggled since his narrow first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses a month ago. Touting himself as a true conservative, he sought to undermine Romney’s electability claim at the same time by predicting Romney would lose to Obama.

Taken together, the number of delegates at stake Tuesday was the largest one-day total yet. Even so, the campaigning was a pale comparison to the Iowa caucuses or primaries last month in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.

Television advertising was sparse; neither Colorado nor Minnesota hosted a candidates’ debate, and there was relatively little campaigning by the contenders themselves until the past few days.

The same was true in last weekend’s Nevada caucuses, which Romney won on the heels of his big Florida primary victory days earlier. The same pattern holds in Maine, where caucuses finish on Saturday.

Not until primaries in Michigan and Arizona on Feb. 28 is the campaign likely to regain the intensity that characterized the first few weeks of the year. Then it roars back to life with the 10-state clash known as Super Tuesday on March 6 with 416 convention delegates at stake.

Gingrich spent the day campaigning in Ohio, one of the primary states on March 6.

His campaign went into a downward spiral after he won the South Carolina primary in an upset. The former speaker was routed in the Florida primary to Romney, then finished a distant second in Nevada over the weekend.

___

Associated Press Writers David Espo and Philip Elliott contributed to this report.