Among his fellow Catholics, Santorum lost to Romney by 43 percent to 37 percent, according to exit polls.
Negativity takes toll
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As voting was underway, an unkind race turned positively insulting. Santorum called Romney a “bully,” and Romney called Santorum an “economic lightweight” who was engaging in political dirty tricks.
In particular, Romney attacked Santorum for a recent robo-call in which his campaign urged Democrats to vote for Santorum in Michigan’s open primary.
“I think Republicans have to recognize there’s a real effort to kidnap our primary process,” Romney said. “And if we want Republicans to nominate the Republican who takes on Barack Obama, I need Republicans to get out and vote and say no to the dirty tricks of a desperate campaign.”
Early exit polls in Michigan seemed to show that the negative campaigning had weighed on the state’s Republicans. Less than half of voters there said they backed their candidate “strongly.” About one in seven said they made their choice because they dislike the other options — four times the proportion that said so in this political season’s first votes, at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.
The polls also showed that a large number of Democrats had, in fact, crossed party lines in Michigan. About one in 10 of Tuesday’s voters identified themselves as Democrats in exit surveys. That was a higher figure than in any of the other early GOP contests.
Earlier Tuesday, Santorum defended his efforts to reach out to those Democrats, saying he was seeking to attract the kind of blue-collar voters who had crossed party lines before.
“We’re going to get this economy growing again,” he said. That, he said, is “a message that we’re selling to not just Republicans, but Republicans and Democrats. Reagan Democrats, who are the key for us winning Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan.”
Speaking in Perrysburg, Ohio — that state will vote on Super Tuesday next week — Santorum said Romney had benefited from Democrats and independents in past primaries. He said it was wrong for him to complain about the tactic being used against him.
“That’s what bullies do,” Santorum said. “You hit them back and they whine.”
Romney, who took questions from the media for the first time in three weeks on Tuesday, blamed himself, not his campaign aides, for what he acknowledged has been a difficult quest for the nomination.
“I’m very pleased with the campaign, its organization. The candidate sometimes makes some mistakes, and so I’m trying to do better and work harder and make sure that we get our message across,” Romney told reporters during a visit to his Michigan campaign headquarters in Livonia.
Among his mistakes, he said, were recent remarks that highlighted his wealth, including a statement that his wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs.”
When reporters asked if those comments had hurt his campaign, he replied: “Yes. Next question.”
Romney suggested that Santorum was winning the support of the GOP’s most conservative voters with “incendiary,” “outrageous” and “accusatory” comments.
“It’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments,” he told reporters. “We’ve seen throughout the campaign that if you’re willing to say really outrageous things that are accusatory and attacking President Obama, that you’re going to jump up in the polls. You know, I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.”
The two other major Republican candidates, Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), did little to contest Michigan or Arizona. On Tuesday night, Gingrich held a rally with at least 500 supporters at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
Staff writers Philip Rucker in Livonia, Mich.; Nia-Malika Henderson in Perrysburg, Ohio; and Amy Gardner in Georgia contributed to this report.
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