Super Tuesday looks less super this time

For the Republican presidential candidates, Super Tuesday is just another election day in a long primary slog that isn’t about to end.

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum campaigned across Ohio, making eleventh-hour appeals Monday in a general-election battleground that has become a focal point of a day of primaries and caucuses in 10 states. But the outcomes won’t resolve the GOP fight.

Four years ago, John McCain gained more than half the delegates needed to win the nomination on Super Tuesday, when 21 states voted, including giants such as California and New York. Romney dropped out two days later and the race was effectively over.

But this time, with fewer than half as many contests and new rules that award delegates to losing candidates, Super Tuesday lacks its former heft. Even a best-case scenario for Romney has the Republican front-runner increasing his delegate total by the end of the night to barely 40% of the number needed for the nomination.

“We’re looking for a good day,” said Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, predicting that the former Massachusetts governor would win a majority of the delegates.

Another advisor, speaking privately to discuss campaign strategy, said Romney “knows this is a long process, this is not going to end anytime in the near future, but I think that he feels very confident that when it’s all over with he’ll be the Republican nominee.”

As Super Tuesday neared, the top rivals honed their focus: Romney as fixer of the economy, Santorum as passionate underdog.

“I’ve worked in business,” Romney told voters in Canton, Ohio. “I understand what it takes to get a business successful and to thrive. I understand how it is that government gets in the way.”

Santorum told supporters and students at a Miamisburg, Ohio, Christian school, “We’re here for a reason — because I’m experienced, I’m principled, I’m values, [I’m] energy, enthusiasm and grit.”

Romney is favored Tuesday in Massachusetts and next-door Vermont; in Idaho, which has a large Mormon population; and in Virginia, where Santorum and Newt Gingrich live but where they failed to qualify for the ballot.

All three trailing candidates are expected to remain in the race, regardless of what happens.

Santorum, still trying to emerge as the conservative alternative, needs victories in Oklahoma and Tennessee to sustain him. If he managed an upset win in Ohio, it would greatly complicate Romney’s efforts to pull away from the pack. But late polling there reveals a familiar pattern: an overwhelming barrage of negative advertising from the Romney forces obliterated Santorum’s early lead, making it much tougher for the former senator from neighboring Pennsylvania.

“No matter what the result is here in Ohio, we’re going to feel great that we stood tall,” Santorum told reporters on a conference call, sounding less than confident. He remained certain, he said, that he would emerge as the “one conviction conservative” in the race.

But Gingrich continues to stand in his way. The former House speaker barnstormed Georgia, which he represented in Congress, for most of the last week, virtually assuring him a victory in what he says is a must-win primary.

Thus far, Gingrich has won just one state, South Carolina. But propped up by a “super PAC” funded largely by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Gingrich is already pointing toward primaries next week in Alabama and Mississippi, where Romney isn’t expected to win.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the only candidate without a victory, is pinning his hopes on picking up delegates, particularly in caucus states. He made a round of last-minute stops Monday in Idaho.

“This is a delegate contest now,” said Fehrnstrom, the Romney spokesman. “More important than winning this state or that state is achieving the requisite number of delegates to achieve the nomination.”

A total of 1,144 delegates will secure the nomination. According to the most recent Associated Press count, Romney has 203 delegates, Santorum 92, Gingrich 33 and Paul 25. On Tuesday, 437 delegates are at stake.

Josh Putnam, an authority on the nominating process, said it would no longer be possible for Santorum or Gingrich to get to 1,144 delegates after Tuesday unless they drastically outperformed what they have done to date. But it might not be apparent that Romney is unstoppable, he said, until the Illinois primary on March 20.

“That’s kind of the last stand for Santorum or Gingrich. If they’re going to break Romney’s will, it’s going to have to be on Romney’s turf, and that’s probably Illinois,” said Putnam, a Davidson College political science professor.

At several points in the GOP primary season, now in its third month, analysts and strategists have declared the race effectively over, only to see Romney falter and a challenger emerge.

Some regard Tuesday as another potential turning point, with the rest of the campaign riding on the results in a few key states.

“Does Romney really put it away, or is he going to have to slog it out? Is he really fighting for delegates going forward, or is he just going through the perfunctory motions to become the nominee? Those are really the questions for me,” said Sara Taylor Fagen, a top White House political aide in George W. Bush’s administration.

Romney victories in Ohio and in Tennessee, the most competitive Southern contest, would create “bleaker scenarios” for his rivals, she said.

But even if his foes can’t gather enough delegates to lock up the nomination, they could still try to block Romney from getting there.

Late-season primary wins by Santorum or Gingrich could stir fresh doubts, particularly among conservatives, that Romney is too weak to defeat Obama, opening the way for someone else at the convention in Tampa, Fla.

“Somebody will catch fire in May and so clearly become the nominee that delegates will just migrate to them and it’ll be over, or we’ll end up negotiating all through July and early August and somebody will emerge,” Gingrich told CNBC on Monday.

Already, the caustic nomination campaign has taken a severe toll on Romney’s standing.

More voting-age Americans now view Romney negatively than positively, 39% to 28%, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released Monday. That’s the first time that Americans have held a negative opinion of a leading Republican candidate at this stage of the campaign since 1996, when Bob Dole was the likely nominee, the Journal said.

paul.west@latimes

maeve.reston@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

West reported from Washington, Reston from Canton and Mehta from Miamisville.