Santorum arrives in Las Vegas like most anyone else — with the odds stacked against him

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012 | 2 a.m.

As the Florida polls closed Tuesday and Mitt Romney prepared to deliver a victory speech, Rick Santorum was standing in the back lot of a strip mall in Las Vegas, trying to convince a modest crowd of under a hundred to vote for him.

"You here in Nevada have an opportunity to speak loudly," he said through a faulty, muffled microphone. "You've got a handful of days, but lots of great things can happen in a short period of time."

This is the latest phase of the Santorum campaign. It has neither the money nor the manpower of Romney's operation, nor the powerful political action committee punch of the pro-Newt Gingrich forces. But Santorum eschews such traditional means — mostly because he doesn't have them — in favor of something he says he does have: momentum.

"We're the candidate that's ticking up, gradually," Santorum said Tuesday.

New disclosure reports reveal Santorum raised more money in the month of January than in the rest of his campaign combined. He also managed third-place finishes in South Carolina and Florida — not as promising as his first place-finish in Iowa, but definitely stronger than anyone was expecting as Christmas.

But there's two rather significant things he's lacking in order to pull off a Nevada miracle: time and a base.

Santorum's best entry point into the Republican electorate has been with those who appreciate his Christian conservatism — a bloc he readily admits doesn't really exist here.

"I think we have a much broader appeal than that," he told the Sun, citing his high favorability numbers in Florida.

But where Santorum can't connect with religious voters he can cite his conservative credentials, especially if he's doing it one-on-one.

His commercials — which started airing Tuesday in Nevada — aren't attack ads like you'll see from Romney or Gingrich, or the PACs that support them. But on the stump, he's got just as much vitriol reserved for those ahead of him in the polls as anybody.

"We need a Republican candidate that can go up against Barack Obama and make Barack Obama the issues in this race, not the Republicans," Santorum told the group that gathered Tuesday - most of them Republicans affiliated with the Tea Party.

He asked them then to think about the defining issues. "The Wall Street bailout, cap and trade, health care or Obamacare," he answered, adding: "Romney and Gingrich, they're 0 for 3."

The message resonated with some undecided and decided-but-not-fully-satisfied Republicans.

"I think I was for Santorum before he entered the race. He's a true conservative," said Mary Potempa, a retired health care worker from Las Vegas who came to hear Santorum speak at the Tea Party Republicans Uniting Nevada Conservatives, or T.R.U.N.C. event.

Potempa voted for Ron Paul in 2008, but thinks he took things too far. "The No. 1 purpose of the government is to protect us, and Ron Paul is so eager to just get rid of everything," she said. "There is a place for him in the government. But not as president."

Susan Morrow of Henderson, who attended the same event, said she voted for Romney in 2008 and was leaning toward Gingrich until about two weeks ago.

"Gingrich was the first alternative, and there were so many people running I couldn't really hear from anybody else," she said. "When it got down to four and Santorum stood up and said 'can't we get to some issues here,' it clicked for me - I didn't even know what Gingrich stood for. [Santorum] really does stand for everything I stand for."

Richard Reynoso, a retired schoolteacher who owns a landscaping company, asked Santorum why he should pick Santorum over Gingrich. Afterward, he told the Sun he'd side with Santorum.

"I am concerned about [electability], very concerned," he said. "But if we don't vote for who we believe is the right person, he'll never win."

Morrow's change of heart and Reynoso's determination are examples of what Santorum hopes to accomplish by staying in the race: Virtually all of Gingrich's supporters, he argues (with the help of some recent poll data), would back him as a second choice, while not all Santorum supporters would go to Gingrich.

That's the calculus he's touting this week as he attempts a come-from-behind win in smaller states like Nevada, Colorado and Missouri, as he did in Iowa. Santorum spent weeks driving to every one of Iowa's 99 countries in a borrowed truck.

But Santorum admits it's not likely to work— at least not here.

"It would be a stretch to say we would win here," he admitted. "But it's a place where hopefully we can improve our position."

Only three campaigning days remain until Nevadans caucus on Saturday, and Santorum's spending about half of them flying back and forth to other states with primaries that follow Nevada's caucuses.

Santorum is spending all of Wednesday in Colorado, for instance, and while he'll be back Thursday to campaign in the Silver State, he'll be bouncing elsewhere before Saturday morning.

"We were out here before anybody else," he protested when this was pointed out. "We're doing our best in a very constrained environment, time-wise."

Santorum was filling seats in back lots and his storefront of a campaign office Tuesday with dozens of supporters. But at the same time, just down the road, Ron Paul — another back-bencher in the national polls — was cramming several hundred into a Henderson halls, supporters who were happy to wait an hour for the candidate to contend with traffic and were still wild for him once he arrived.

For Paul, who finished last in Florida, Nevada is a sort of homecoming — he did well here in 2008. And that shows how stacked the odds are against Santorum in Nevada: Romney has his win, Gingrich has his Sheldon Adelson, and Paul has his faithful followers. Compared to that, a head start of a few hours can't be expected to do too much.

"You never know," Santorum said. "We've over-performed before."