Romney looks to Wisconsin for all-clear sign
A VICTORY over Rick Santorum in Wisconsin on Tuesday would effectively close the first phase of the primary season, senior Republicans say. It would leave Romney with not only a commanding lead in the race for delegates but also a claim to have fended off energetic challenges across a range of battleground states with a disciplined and well-financed campaign effort.
Romney and his aides continue to work behind the scenes to win support from respected voices in the party and prepare in earnest to take on President Barack Obama. The campaign will soon start raising money for the general election, donors said, as well as drastically expand its Boston headquarters and build state operations across the country.
The Romney campaign is also taking steps to infuse the organization with seasoned advisers, Republicans said, and intensifying its research of prospective running mates.
“There’s been plenty of opportunity for debates and discussion,” said Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa, who is among the Republican leaders eager to unite the party and concentrate on trying to win the White House. “We need to acknowledge and recognize that nobody is perfect, but there is going to be a very clear choice with the present administration.”
Branstad, who has remained neutral in the race, is one of several governors and party officials who say a victory in Wisconsin—where Romney leads in the polls—would be the time for Republicans to rally behind Romney.
Reflecting the growing impatience, Steven J. Law, president of the largest outside group planning to support Republicans this fall, Crossroads, said Saturday, “Clearly there is a sentiment out there that the time is coming soon to really turn our full attention to Obama.”
Predicting an “incredibly tough election,” he added that “every day that Republicans are focused on anything other than Obama’s record is a day wasted.”
Party elders are discussing ways to help characterize Romney as the presumptive nominee—perhaps by the end of April—well before he reaches the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination.
That effort was helped along by the billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson, who, after sending $15 million of his family’s fortune to the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, was quoted by The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles last week as saying Gingrich seemed to have reached “the end of his line.”
Adelson did so after telling a number of Romney financial supporters who were at his Las Vegas mansion for the opening dinner of the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition that he was ready to do whatever he could to help Romney become president and to deliver the Senate to the Republicans. (The dinner was previously reported by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization.)
An attendee of the private dinner said in an interview that the general sense there was “that the page had clearly been turned” and that it was time to focus on the general election.