Santorum Seeks Momentum After Evangelical Leaders’ Endorsement

(For more 2012 campaign news, see ELECT.)

Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Rick Santorum, buoyed by support over the weekend from national evangelical leaders, is urging Republican voters in the final week of campaigning before South Carolina’s primary to coalesce behind him as the alternative to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

“If all you think we need to do to get this economy going and get this country on the right track is to cut government and reduce taxes, you don’t understand America,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said yesterday at a “Faith, Family & Freedom” rally in Florence, South Carolina.

“America is a moral enterprise, not an economic enterprise,” Santorum said. “Don’t compromise on what you know is best for this country,” he added. “South Carolina, vote your conscience, vote your values.”

The decision by religious leaders within the Republican Party to endorse Santorum before South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary may be the last chance to stall Romney’s march toward the party nomination. He made history with back-to-back wins in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary.

Romney’s candidacy received another boost yesterday when a campaign official for Jon Huntsman Jr., speaking on condition of anonymity, said the former Utah governor will drop out of the race before the primary and endorse Romney. The Huntsman announcement will come a day after he was endorsed by The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper.

Huntsman’s withdrawal further narrows a Republican field of candidates shrinking since Romney claimed an eight-vote win in Iowa and 16 percentage-point lead in New Hampshire.

Mixed Romney Record

In 2008, 60 percent of South Carolina Republican primary voters said in exit polls that they consider themselves “born again” or evangelical Christians, who often oppose abortion rights and gay marriage. Romney’s record on those issues is mixed. When running for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts in 1994, he vowed to protect abortion rights. He now says he’s changed his mind on the issue and opposes them.

Evangelicals helped propel former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee into second place in South Carolina four years ago. What’s unclear is whether Santorum can use the endorsement of religious leaders to his advantage. A late embrace by Iowa evangelical leaders helped him capture second place in the caucuses, just eight votes behind Romney. In New Hampshire, he failed to capitalize on that momentum and dropped to fifth place behind Romney, Texas Representative Ron Paul, Huntsman and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich respectively.

“It would have been better if it happened a lot earlier -- or even a week earlier,” said David R. White, chairman of the political science department at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. “It’s too little, too late.”

Debate Tonight

Santorum will have a chance to highlight his new backing today in Myrtle Beach, where Republican rivals are gathering ahead of tonight’s Fox News Channel and Wall Street Journal presidential debate. Another CNN debate is set for Jan. 19.

Gingrich, who is challenging Santorum’s claim as the Romney alternative, spoke to more than 1,000 worshipers at the Cathedral of Praise Church in Charleston and stressed his own opposition to abortion rights as he sought their backing.

Romney, who took the day off from the campaign trail, won the backing of the Greenville News. An endorsement from Huntsman, whose campaign struggled financially since summer, would make it easier for the two-time presidential candidate to lock up the votes of those not swayed by social issues.

Paul, who has made just one campaign appearance in South Carolina since his second-place showing in the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 10, did so yesterday to collect the endorsement of an anti-tax and anti-government spending Tea Party champion, State Senator Tom Davis.

Perry’s Lost Standing

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who was initially the top choice of conservative leaders who gathered in Texas on Saturday, was unable to hold them as his candidacy has slipped to sixth place in most public opinion polls.

Santorum received 85 of 114 votes on the third ballot at the gathering of religious leaders on a ranch near Bleiblerville, Texas, defeating Gingrich, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told reporters on a conference call Jan. 14.

“We feel very good about that,” Santorum said to reporters after yesterday’s rally in Florence. “We feel like, that conservatives are coalescing around our campaign and that’s going to be good for us not just in South Carolina but as we go forward.”

Terry Schiavo Case

Santorum was a proponent of government intervention in 2005 to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who had been on feeding tubes, against the wishes of Schiavo’s husband. An opponent of gay marriage, Santorum compared such unions to polygamy at a Jan. 5 college rally in New Hampshire, drawing boos from the student audience.

Dave Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, and a Republican consultant, said Gingrich’s second-place standing in three statewide polls is built on “soft” support and that “a lot of people are regular listeners to Christian radio stations and they will follow this as a cue to help them.”

“I think most people will make up their mind Thursday, Friday and Saturday,” said Woodard.

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who is a national co-chairman for the Gingrich campaign and was an attendee at the Texas gathering, said it’s incorrect to describe the voting there as an endorsement. He said it was more correct to say Santorum won a “majority” of the support.

Need Consensus Candidate

Watts said that, although the primary campaign could go on weeks or months longer, “after South Carolina, there will have to be a consensus candidate” for social conservatives.

In Florence, Santorum spoke of his anti-abortion views, his grief and tested faith in 1996 after a son was born prematurely and died two hours after his birth and a belief that America is an exceptional nation.

He said Romney’s expansion of health insurance coverage while governor of Massachusetts would blunt Republicans’ ability to criticize Obama’s national expansion in a general election campaign.

The South Carolina contest will play out in an economic environment that’s worse than the national average. The state’s unemployment rate was 9.9 percent in November, the most recent month available, compared with December’s national rate of 8.5 percent. That’s high enough to put South Carolina in the top 10 states for the most unemployment in November.

On the final weekend before the primary, advertising also grew more frequent across the state.

Pro-Santorum Committee

The Red White and Blue Fund, a group supporting Santorum’s campaign, began airing a commercial that promotes his opposition to abortion and radical Islam.

Romney’s campaign released an online ad that seeks to address concerns some voters might have about his changed position on abortion during his political career.

A political action committee backing Perry began airing an ad that attacks Gingrich on ethics and accuses Santorum of voting for pay raises and locally targeted federal spending projects known as earmarks.

Winning Our Future, a committee backing Gingrich, is airing two new ads in South Carolina. One links Romney to President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care overhaul and says Romney is “not conservative” and “not electable.”

--With assistance from David Mildenberg in Charlotte and Greg Giroux and Tom Schoenberg in Washington. Editors: Jeanne Cummings, Mark Silva

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Florence, South Carolina at mtalev@bloomberg.net; John McCormick in North Charleston, South Carolina at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net