CHICAGO — His confidence surging, Mitt Romney ignored his Republican rivals on the eve of today’s primary election in Illinois and turned his fire instead on the Democrat he hopes to oust in the fall.
The former Massachusetts governor pushed into President Barack Obama’s home territory, assailing Obama’s economic credentials on the Chicago campus where the president taught for more than a decade.
“Freedom is on the ballot this year,” Romney, 65, told students and supporters, contending that Obama is limiting the nation’s recovery from recession by an “assault on our economic freedom.” “I am offering a real choice and a very different beginning,” he said.
Romney’s chief rival- former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum - kept the focus on the GOP front-runner, arguing that nominating the former Massachusetts governor would deprive the party of a defining issue to use against Obama in the November election - health care.
“Obamacare,” said Santorum, 53, is based on “Romneycare,” Massachusetts’ 2006 health-care law.
Romney has spent big on advertising in Illinois, and he will have devoted more than three straight days to the state by the time votes are counted tonight.
After a one-sided victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday, the Romney campaign said it sees in Illinois a potential breaking point for his rivals who have vowed to stay in the race until the GOP’s national convention in August. Should Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas stay politically alive until then, the convention could become an intra-party fight for the first time since 1976.
Illinois is expected to be far closer than Puerto Rico’s blowout. But even if Santorum should win the popular vote, he cannot win at least 10 of the state’s 54 delegates because his campaign didn’t file the necessary paperwork.
Still, Santorum campaigned hard across the state Sunday and Monday.
“If we’re able to come out of Illinois with a huge or surprise win, I guarantee you, I guarantee you that we will win this nomination,” he said.
He rallied conservatives Monday in Dixon, Ill., the hometown of former President Ronald Reagan.
Santorum invoked the 1976 primary election, in which he said Reagan was “considered too conservative” and “unelectable,” pointing out that Reagan won 11 states in that primary season.
“I might add, just parenthetically, that if we just happen to win Illinois, that will be the 11th state that I’ve won,” he said.
Reagan lost the nomination to President Gerald Ford, but his campaign set the foundation for his return in 1980 when he won the nomination and defeated Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
As Romney focused on the economy in Chicago, Santorum said that the president’s health-care overhaul, not the economy, is the election’s “most salient issue.”
And he continued to emphasize conservative cultural values: “Ronald Reagan understood that faith plus family equals freedom in America,” Santorum said. “He went out and painted a vision of who we are, what we came from and what we can be in the future.”
In remarks in Rockford, Ill., Santorum said an oppressive government rather than the economy is the real issue of the presidential campaign.
“At every single speech that I give I talk about Obamacare,” he said. “[In] every single speech, I say that the issue in this race is not the economy. The reason the economy is an issue in this race is because we have a government that is oppressing its people and taking away their freedom and the economy is suffering as a result of it.”
Romney, meanwhile, campaigned in the city where Obama taught law at the University of Chicago and where the president has his national campaign headquarters. Avoiding any reference to Republican opponents, Romney assailed the president.
“Day by day, job-killing regulation by regulation, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, he’s crushing the dream and the dreamers,” Romney said.
“The American economy is fueled by freedom,” said Romney, flanked by a row of American flags. “The Obama administration’s assault on our economic freedom is the principal reason why the recovery has been so tepid - and why it couldn’t meet their expectations, let alone ours.”
The other remaining candidates in the race are on the Illinois ballot but haven’t focused as much on the state. Gingrich spent two days there last week, but has shifted his attention to Louisiana, which holds its primary Saturday. Paul held a rally at the University of Illinois on Wednesday then moved on.
Including Puerto Rico’s results, Romney has collected 521 delegates, compared to Santorum’s 253, Gingrich’s 136 and Paul’s 50, according to an Associated Press tally.
Romney and some Republicans are eager to move beyond the primary season that has consumed far more energy, resources and political capital than most expected.But the former Massachusetts governor has so far struggled to win over his party’s most passionate voters - Tea Party activists and evangelicals who don’t trust him as a true conservative.
At a campaign stop the previous night, Romney’s wife, Ann, called for Republicans to unite behind her husband, suggesting it is time to “move on to the next challenge.”
Romney and Santorum raised $11.5 million and $9 million respectively in February. And Romney and his allies are spending large amounts in Illinois.
Romney’s campaign had spent $1.1 million, while the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, had spent an additional $2.4 million on advertising in Illinois through Monday, according to figures collected by the media-monitoring firm, SMG Delta.
Santorum’s super PAC, the Red White and Blue Fund, had spent $327,000, while his campaign had spent $200,000.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Jim Kuhnhenn and Don Babwin of The Associated Press; by Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times; and by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, John McCormick, Mike Dorning, Lisa Lerer, Kristin Jensen, Julianna Goldman, Julie Bykowicz and Greg Giroux of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/20/2012