Will Nevada ‘confirm the status of Mitt’ or shake things up?

By David McGrath Schwartz

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

With Mitt Romney’s commanding win in Florida on Tuesday, he will face lofty expectations in Nevada as he tries to maintain momentum and cement his status as the Republican presidential front-runner.

The former Massachusetts governor will enter Saturday’s GOP caucuses as the heavy favorite, hoping a win here will be the first in a series of February victories.

The other Republican candidates look to Nevada’s caucuses as an opportunity to slow Romney’s roll.

“I think Romney’s team wants to plant a flag in the West,” said Greg Ferraro, a Republican political consultant who is neutral in the race. “They will want to sustain momentum, show they can” put together back-to-back wins.

There’s little doubt who President Barack Obama’s supporters believe they’ll face in November: National and state Democrats issued statements attacking Romney on Tuesday night.

Before Florida — where Romney won with 46 percent of the vote to Newt Gingrich’s 32 percent — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (Iowa), Romney (New Hampshire) and Gingrich (South Carolina) had each won an early state.

Gingrich won resoundingly in South Carolina before Romney turned more aggressive in debates, television ads and on the stump.

Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who have less money, were campaigning in Nevada on Tuesday night, having given up on the larger, more expensive Florida primary. Santorum made his case to Tea Party conservatives at a rally in Las Vegas, while Paul held a large rally in Henderson.

Paul has high hopes for Nevada. He finished second here to Romney in 2008, beating eventual nominee Sen. John McCain by one point. Since then, he has built an organization and is counting on a shared libertarianism with a share of the state’s electorate to propel him to a strong showing compared to 2008’s 14 percent.

Paul’s strategy is to gain delegates in states like Nevada, which distribute them in proportion to the candidates’ share of the vote rather than awarding them all to the winner as Florida does. He is also focusing on states, again like Nevada, that hold caucuses, a process that gives hard-core supporters outsize influence.

Gingrich will campaign here Wednesday. He comes backed by Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam. They have sustained Gingrich’s efforts in recent weeks with $10 million in contributions to a super-PAC supporting his candidacy.

Ferraro said the race for second in Nevada will be key.

Paul’s campaign expects the candidate’s libertarian message to resonate with Silver State voters.

Gingrich, meanwhile, wants to continue through “Super Tuesday” — March 6, when 10 states hold caucuses or primaries — and finishing second in a state where he’s not had much of an organization would be a boost in that direction.

Nevada’s Gingrich backers echoed their candidate’s promise to stay in the race for the long haul.

“It’s quite possible that we’re headed to the first brokered convention in our adult lifetime,” said Bob Beers, a former state senator and Gingrich supporter.

He said as long as Ron Paul is promising to stay in the race until the convention, other candidates will, too, trying to trade delegates until one candidate gets the majority.

“It’s a long road to the nomination,” Beers said. “As is often the case in politics, the guy with the most money is in the lead, but it’s not done yet.”

Robert O’Brien, a Romney senior adviser on foreign policy, said Tuesday afternoon that talk of a brokered convention — not seen by a major party in over 50 years — “is a sign of total desperation.”

“A delegate fight is about as likely as (Gingrich’s) space colony on the moon being the 51st state,” he said.

O’Brien followed with the Romney line of attack on Gingrich, that the former speaker “gets erratic. He gets grandiose.”

The candidate who wins Florida will be the presumptive Republican nominee, O’Brien argued.

“Nevada will confirm the status of Mitt,” he said. “He might not have the delegates after Nevada, but he’ll be the presumptive nominee if he wins back to back.”