On the eve of the massive Super Tuesday contests, Former Gov. Mitt Romney scored another quiet electoral victory, winning all of Maine’s 18 delegates in a three-day series of local caucuses.
With 68 percent of the precincts reporting, Romney had garnered the support of some 52 percent of the vote with Sen. John McCain trailing behind with 21 percent and Congressman Ron Paul at 19 percent.
For party officials, who reported heavy turnout for the county caucuses, the result appeared to match their expectations.
“I’m not surprised about Romney. He is a New England person,” Scott Kauffman, vice chairman of the Maine Republican Committee, told the Associated Press.
The Romney campaign, however, strove to wring any momentum they could from the New England victory.
“With a career spent working in the economy, creating jobs, turning around faltering institutions and imposing fiscal discipline, I am ready to bring conservative change to Washington,” Romney said in a statement. “In this campaign, I am proud to have the support of the people of Maine.”
The campaign also sought to bolster its conservative credentials by trumpeting the “endorsement” of former Sen. Rick Santorum, who told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham on Friday, “If you’re a conservative, there really is only one place to go right now. I would even argue farther than that. If you’re a Republican, if you’re a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that’s Mitt Romney.”
Romney has been taking aim at both McCain and former Gov. Mike Hukabee, accusing the Arizona senator of not being Republican enough and trying to dismiss the former Arkansas governor of not being viable.
When Romney called the race a “two man campaign” and told CNN he worried that he and Huckabee “split the more conservative side of the party,” Huckabee was having none of it.
“I thought it was pretty arrogant and presumptuous the other night for him to suggest that, if Ronald Reagan were voting, that he’d be voting for Mitt Romney, and even more arrogant and presumptuous for him to assume that, if people were not voting for me, that they’d be voting for him, and the idea that my voters would go to him is nonsense,” Huckabee told ABC News.
Headed into Super Tuesday when 21 states cast ballots, electing nearly 41 percent of all of the delegates to the national convention, Romney sought to solidify the conservative base of the party.
“Conservative voices, both from radio and from publications, are saying, ‘You know what, we’ve got to get behind Mitt Romney. We really can’t afford John McCain as the nominee of our party,’” Romney told CNN.
“And that kind of groundswell is what led me to win in Maine yesterday.”
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