Rick Santorum wins straw poll in Arizona’s largest county

On the campaign trail with Felicia Sonmez

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on Tuesday overwhelmingly won the Maricopa County Republican Party presidential straw poll, a sign that the tide may be turning against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) among party insiders in a key primary state where he had previously appeared to be on course for an easy win.

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum speaks at the Maricopa County Lincoln Day Luncheon, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012, in Phoenix. (Eric Gay — Associated Press)Santorum took first place in the informal Lincoln Day Luncheon survey with 230 votes. Romney placed a distant second with the votes of 71 participants. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) took third with 35 votes and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) placed fourth with 22 votes.

The survey comes a week out from Arizona’s Feb. 28 primary. Santorum addressed the Maricopa County gathering Tuesday afternoon and is slated to hold a rally in the same Phoenix venue later this evening.

Maricopa is by far the most populous of Arizona’s 15 counties, home to the cities of Phoenix, Mesa and Glendale. In the 2008 Republican primary, it comprised about 330,000 of the roughly 514,000 votes cast in the entire state, or 64 percent.

In that race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who placed first in the state — won 167,717 votes in Maricopa County, or 48 percent, while Romney placed second with 116,995 votes, or 34 percent.

News of Santorum’s straw poll win also comes as a new CNN/Time/Opinion Research poll shows the former senator now within the margin of victory against Romney in the Grand Canyon State.

Romney takes 36 percent in the survey to Santorum’s 32 percent, while Gingrich takes 18 percent and Paul garners 6 percent. The poll had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

Sensing a burst of momentum by Santorum in several upcoming states, Romney has set his sights on the former senator on the campaign trail, arguing that he voted in favor of wasteful spending during his years in Washington.

In his remarks at Tuesday’s luncheon, Santorum fired back by casting himself as the outsider and Romney as the insider.

“Now, it’s interesting, because you hear a lot of talk about who’s the insider and who’s the outsider in this race,” Santorum said. “And I think it’s really fascinating that here’s the guy that’s — there’s a guy that’s from outside of Washington who was not a senator or congressman — not because he didn’t try to win, but he just never got elected — but someone who was actually inside Washington, who was an outsider when he was inside.”

He highlighted several ways that he said he’d worked to reform Washington, including his work together with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) to impose term limits on members of GOP Senate leadership and committee chairmen.

It’s worth noting that the Maricopa County vote is an unscientific straw poll, and a small one at that (there were several more hundred people present at Tuesday’s gathering than participated in the poll). Even so, it’s a big sign that Santorum is rounding up support not just among grassroots conservatives but also among party establishment figures in a range of states — a constituency that typically has backed Romney.

In Ohio, he has received a rousing reception at several Lincoln Day dinners in recent days. And last week, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) announced he was switching his endorsement from Romney to Santorum, a move that several Ohio GOP insiders said in interviews they viewed as a significant boost to Santorum’s chances.