WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said his rival Mitt Romney is “far and away” the most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination.
Running for president “turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be,” the former House speaker said Sunday.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Gingrich said he’ll endorse Romney if the former Massachusetts governor gets a majority of the delegates to the Republican nominating convention.
“I have no regrets, but it’s clear that Gov. Romney had done a very good job of building a very substantial machine,” Gingrich said. He added that his campaign is in debt and that he spent money in a “real brawl” in Florida, where he lost the Jan. 31 primary to Romney.
Gingrich, 68, said he has alittle less than $4.5 million in campaign debt, and he’s operating on a “shoestring” budget.
Romney has 658 delegates, according to the latest Associated Press tally. That is more than half the 1,144 needed to capture the nomination.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has 281 delegates, Gingrich trails with 135 delegates and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has 51.
If Romney is the nominee, Gingrich said, “I will work as hard for him as I would for myself” during the fall campaign. Republicans are all committed to defeating Democratic President Barack Obama, a “genuine radical,” he said.
“I do think there’s a desirefor a more idea-oriented Republican Party, but that doesn’t translate necessarily to being able to take on the Romney machine,” Gingrich said.
“I hit him as hard as I could. He hit me as hard as he could. It turned out he had more things to hit with than I did. And that’s part of the business. He’s done the fundraising side brilliantly,” Gingrich said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Santorum said the former senator will not campaign today so he can stay with his daughter Bella, who was admitted to a hospital Friday.
Santorum left the campaign trail Thursday for the Easter holiday and had planned to take off most of today to celebrate his daughter Elizabeth’s 21st birthday, though he had scheduled some private meetings and phone calls.
The campaign announced that Bella, 3, who was born with a chromosomal disorder called trisomy 18, was hospitalized Friday. She was also hospitalized in January with pneumonia.
The family has not made public the reason for the current hospitalization.
Information for this article was contributed by Richard Rubin, Cheyenne Hopkins and Viola Gienger of Bloomberg News; by Kimberly Hefling of The Associated Press; and by Katharine Q.
Seelye of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 04/09/2012