Santorum Tops Romney In Minnesota, Missouri

WASHINGTON (AP) — A resurgent Rick Santorum easily won Minnesota’s Republican caucuses Tuesday night, relegating front-runner Mitt Romney to a distant third-place finish that raised fresh questions about his ability to attract ardent conservatives at the core of the party’s political base.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, was victorious, as well, in a nonbinding Missouri primary that was worth bragging rights but no delegates to the party’s national convention.

Colorado also held caucuses. The first few hundred votes tallied trended Santorum’s way, but the count lagged well behind Minnesota’s.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, prevailed in both Minnesota and Colorado in 2008, the first time he ran for the nomination, but the Republican Party has become more conservative in both states since then.

Minnesota’s victory was the first for Santorum since he eked out a 34-vote win in the lead-off Iowa caucuses a month ago.

He had faded far from the lead in the primaries and caucuses since Iowa, and Gingrich seemed to eclipse him as the leading conservative rival to Romney when he won the South Carolina primary late last month.

A jubilant Santorum declared to cheering supporters in St. Charles, Missouri: “Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota!”

Challenging his rival, he declared that on issues ranging from health care to “Wall Street bailouts, Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama.”

Returns from 66 percent of Minnesota’s precincts showed Santorum with 45 percent support, Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 27 percent and Romney with 17 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich trailed with 11 percent.

With 99 percent of the precincts counted in Missouri, Santorum had 55 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 25 percent. Paul had 12 percent, while Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot.

There were 37 Republican National Convention delegates at stake in Minnesota and 33 more in Colorado, and together, they accounted for the largest one-day combined total so far in the race for the Republican nomination. Missouri’s delegates to the party’s national nominating convention will be chosen in caucuses beginning next month.

Santorum campaigned aggressively in all three states holding contests Tuesday, seeking a breakthrough to revitalize a longshot campaign that had struggled since Iowa. He won Minnesota largely the way he did neighboring Iowa, dispatching his organizers from the first state to the second and courting evangelical pastors and leaders of the tea party movement which advocates limited government and low taxes.

But Santorum remains a longshot for the nomination because Romney has an overwhelming advantage in campaign funds, organizational strength and support from the party establishment needed to sustain what is now even more likely to be a drawn out state-by-state battle for the nomination.

Santorum, long an outspoken figure on social issues, appealed for support from the large contingent of religious conservatives in the three states voting Tuesday, stressing his firm opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

Romney, despite victories in New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada, has struggled since 2008 to convince some cultural conservatives that he’s conservative enough. 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.

To counter Santorum, Romney has shifted his focus in recent days from economic to social issues, raising such issues as abortion, religious freedom and gay marriage in an intensified effort to win over religious conservatives.

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 U.S. 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 also responded by assailing Santorum as an advocate of congressional earmarks — the practice of seeking federal funds for special projects in his home state — shifting the criticism he had leveled at Gingrich when the Georgian seemed a more imposing threat.

Santorum’s victory in Minnesota netted him at least 13 delegates to the party’s national convention.

Romney leads the overall race for delegates, with 101. Gingrich has 32, Santorum has 30 and aul has nine. It takes 1,144 delegates to win the Republican nomination at the Republican National Convention in late August in Tampa, Florida.

The campaigning for Tuesday’s contests 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 a 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 a 10-state Super Tuesday on March 6 with 416 convention delegates at stake. Georgia, where Gingrich launched his career in Congress, is the biggest prize that night with 76 delegates. Next is Ohio, which has 63 delegates at stake and where early voting has already begun.

Gingrich spent the day campaigning in Ohio, where early voting has already begun.

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.

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Associated Press Writers David Espo in Washington and Philip Elliott in St. Charles, Missouri, contributed to this report.