Savoring unexpected victory over front-runner Romney, ex-house speaker seeks to stir up Republican race


WASHINGTON (AP) ― Newt Gingrich moves on to Florida savoring a major upset victory over Mitt Romney, who will be looking to reset his once front-running campaign with a focus on attacking his chief rival’s character.

Romney is making his second run for the Republican presidential nomination, this time to unseat President Barack Obama in the November election. But the former Massachusetts governor has failed so far to excite broad support from an increasingly conservative Republican electorate.

Obama, while still popular personally, is battling weak approval ratings for his leadership in pulling the U.S. economy out of the ravages of the 2007-2009 Great Recession. About 8.5 percent of American workers remain unemployed, millions have lost homes to mortgage foreclosures and the overall economy, while improving in recent months, remains wobbly.

Gingrich said he owes his stunning victory in South Carolina’s primary election Saturday to proving that he speaks the political language of deeply conservative voters. He won points, too, for his attacks on Romney’s moderate past on social issues like abortion, gay rights and health care reform.

And despite the heavy influence of evangelical Christians in South Carolina, that powerful voting block chose to overlook Gingrich’s history: three marriages, admitted infidelities and an ethics reprimand when he was the speaker of the House of Representatives in the mid-1990s.

Romney turns to Florida at what is possibly the most critical moment of his campaign. He has suffered two weeks of sustained attacks from his opponents and a series of self-inflicted errors that erased any notion that he would be able to lock up the nomination quickly by winning the state’s Jan. 31 primary.

An indication of how deeply Romney has been shaken was his announcement Sunday that he would release his income tax records for 2010 and estimates for 2011 on Tuesday. For weeks, the multimillionaire Romney had been reluctant to let voters see his tax filings, which would not only show how much he earns, but that he likely pays a lower tax rate than ordinary wage earners because much of his income is derived from capital gains on investments.

Romney was an easy winner in the New Hampshire primary earlier in the month. Before that, he was a very close runner-up behind former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the leadoff Iowa caucuses where the vote count was so confused that he was originally announced the victor.

Romney led by double digits in polls of South Carolina Republicans a week before the primary. But Gingrich surged into the lead following strong performances in two debates last week. Now, Romney acknowledges that his battle with Gingrich is likely to stretch out into the spring if not longer.

Despite his loss in South Carolina, Romney remains the contender with the largest and best-funded organization to sustain an extended campaign. For all the political momentum gained in South Carolina, Gingrich made it immediately obvious in his victory speech that he is short on funds.

Behind the scenes, aides indicated that Romney would focus on Gingrich’s character to distinguish himself, the father of five who has been married to the same woman for 42 years, from his thrice-married rival. And the aides argued that the results in South Carolina don’t indicate Republican primary voters everywhere are willing to overlook Gingrich’s past.

Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, told ABC News in an interview aired Thursday that the former speaker asked her for an open marriage so he could continue having an affair with the House staffer who is now his third wife.

But the emboldened Gingrich said on Sunday that his hardline conservative views and confrontational style will be needed to stand up to Obama’s “billion-dollar war chest” and take back the White House.

In several televised interviews, Gingrich said Romney was a moderate who left Republican voters cold and that only he, Gingrich, could go “toe to toe” with Obama.

With votes counted from all of South Carolina’s precincts, Gingrich had 40 percent to Romney’s 28 percent. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won 17 percent to Texas congressman Ron Paul’s 13 percent.

Gingrich won at least 23 of the 25 delegates at stake. The other two have yet to be allocated. Fifty delegates will be at stake in Florida, a contest that Romney can ill afford to lose.

All four remaining candidates planned to be Florida Monday for the first of two presidential debates this week.

Both Santorum and Paul seem out of the running for the nomination.

To preserve his limited campaign treasury, Paul is bypassing Florida to focus on Nevada and other states which hold caucuses next month where he is more likely to collect delegates to the Republican national nominating convention in late August.

Romney supporters dismissed Gingrich’s win in South Carolina and said his nomination would be a disaster for the Republican Party, citing his rocky tenure leading House Republicans in the 1990s that resulted in allegations of ethics violations.