Illinois Republicans delivered a decisive victory to Mitt Romney in the state’s presidential primary Tuesday, crushing Rick Santorum in what amounted to the first big-state head-to-head contest among the front-runners for the GOP nomination.
With 99 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, unofficial results showed the former Massachusetts governor with 47 percent of the vote to Santorum’s 35 percent. The other two candidates in the race, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, made only token campaign efforts in Illinois and were trailing badly.
Even more important for Romney, he swamped Santorum by winning 41 of the 54 elected delegates up for grabs in the state. Santorum had 10, though the final three delegate slots still up for grabs were Downstate, where he ran strongest.
“What a night. Thank you, Illinois. What a night. Wow!,” Romney said to supporters at his victory party at a Schaumburg hotel shortly after 8 p.m. “Tonight we thank the people of Illinois for their vote and for this extraordinary victory.”
Savoring a victory in President Barack Obama’s home state, Romney framed the general election as a “defining decision” for the American people. “This election will be about principle. Our economic freedom will be on the ballot. … It’s time to say this word: enough.”
Santorum, who had already moved on to his home state of Pennsylvania, told a rally in Gettysburg that he had congratulated Romney but still performed well in Illinois.
“If you look at what’s going to happen tonight, we’re going to win Downstate, we’re going to win central Illinois, we’re going to (win) western Illinois,” he said. “We won the areas that conservatives and Republicans populate. We’re very happy about that. We’re happy about the delegates we’re going to get too.”
The results provided the former Massachusetts governor with a sizable victory and also resurrected the aura of inevitability that his campaign has tried to project, only to be thwarted by close elections and even defeats in other states.
Yet low voter turnout throughout Illinois raised questions about Republican enthusiasm for any of the presidential contenders, particularly in a state where the GOP has long chafed at its minority status to Democrats and finally had a chance to influence a national nomination.
The state still is expected to back Obama in November and thus become flyover territory for the national campaigns in the fall, except for the occasional fundraising stop.
But Romney clearly had something to lose if he performed poorly in the state’s primary.
He did not. Now, Romney’s victory puts Santorum on the defensive and needing a major victory in Louisiana on Saturday if he hopes to derail Romney’s march to accumulating the 1,144 delegates needed to seal the GOP nomination.
Romney spent more time in Illinois — and he and allies poured in far more money — than had been originally planned after a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll showed a neck-and-neck contest with Santorum.
As was the case in previous states where Romney was severely challenged by a rival, he and his supporters spent money fast and furiously to tarnish the opposition.
Romney and a super political action committee backing his candidacy spent $3.8 million, including a heavy TV ad blitz attacking Santorum in the expensive Chicago market, home to moderate suburban Republicans who were key to his victory. Santorum and his super PAC spent about $500,000 statewide.
More than 7 in 10 voters statewide said TV ads were a factor in their vote, exit polls provided to CNN and other major networks showed.
Moreover, Republicans in suburban Cook County and the collar counties, where the bulk of the state’s GOP vote is cast, supported Romney by 20 percentage points over Santorum, exit polls showed.
If anything, it was the breadth of Romney’s victory that could overwhelm rivals as the nominating contest continues. Though Santorum held the edge among very conservative voters, they made up only 30 percent of the vote. Romney, however, enjoyed a commanding advantage among the rest of the voters, those who called themselves somewhat conservative or moderate.
A plurality of GOP voters, 35 percent, said defeating Obama was the most important quality in selecting a candidate, and Romney picked up more than 70 percent of those voters, the exit poll showed.
Shortly after Romney took the stage, he took special note to say he had spoken briefly with Sen. Mark Kirk, who is in rehabilitation after a stroke. Kirk had been an early Romney endorser.
Santorum, who had sought to broaden his message beyond fiscal conservatism to include social conservative issues, found his primary eve a rocky one in Illinois. Trying to portray his candidacy as transcending fiscal issues, he said he didn’t care about the economy and the unemployment rate — gaffes quickly seized upon by the Romney campaign.
At his last campaign stop in Illinois, in the Peoria area, he all but asked voters for a “do-over.”
In politics, there are no “do-overs.”
The Illinois vote was really two primaries in one, a statewide popularity contest that translated only into bragging rights for the winner, and a separate congressional-district-by-district battle for pledged delegates to the GOP nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., in late August.
The 54 elected delegates are among 69 that Illinois will send to the convention. A dozen will be selected at the state’s GOP convention in June and the state’s national Republican committeeman, committeewoman and chairman also get delegate spots.
Illinois has long been considered a haven for Republican moderates, which should have made Romney a favorite in the state. So the tightness of the race heading into March was something of a surprise and played a role in the last-minute spending blitz.
Santorum, riding a wave of enthusiasm from social conservatives, made Romney sweat, but perhaps not so much as it may have appeared. In an organizational foul-up, the former Pennsylvania senator failed to field a full slate of potential delegates, hampering his ability to pull off a game-changing upset in the most significant portion of the primary.
Santorum left the state before voting began. But he had spent much of the run-up in friendly conservative territory Downstate, where he argued that Obama-like health care reforms once championed by Romney in Massachusetts would rob the GOP of a key general election issue if Romney won the nomination.
Romney spent part of his last campaign day at the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught constitutional law and which is just blocks from the Obama family’s Kenwood home. He noted that the school was the home of famous conservative economists like Milton Friedman, who taught that free, unfettered markets were a cornerstone of economic prosperity.
“President Obama has expanded government instead of empowering the American people,” said Romney, vowing to do the opposite. “He’s put us deeper in debt. He’s slowed the recovery and harmed our economy. And he has attacked the cornerstone of American prosperity: our economic freedom.”
Gingrich and Paul made only token campaign efforts in the state. Gingrich spent two days last week in the state before moving on to campaign in Louisiana. Paul showed up last Wednesday for a rally at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and left the same day.
Gingrich’s drubbing in Illinois was just the latest in a series of electoral setbacks for the former U.S. House speaker. But amid questions about his viability to continue — including new reports that his campaign’s financing was in trouble, Gingrich made it clear he was not ready to give up.
He issued a brief statement after the vote, dripping with scorn for Romney.
“To defeat Barack Obama, Republicans can’t nominate a candidate who relies on outspending his opponents 7-1,” Gingrich said. “Instead, we need a nominee who offers powerful solutions that hold the president accountable for his failures.”
rap30@aol.com
