Republicans in Puerto Rico voted yesterday for delegates to the party’s national convention as presidential contenders set their sights on this week’s primaries in US President Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois.
Illinois, where voting is scheduled to take place tomorrow, is a new test for the Republican candidates struggling to keep momentum in the race for the nomination to challenge Obama in November.
Polls showed former senator Rick Santorum within striking range in Illinois of frontrunner Mitt Romney, who has a commanding lead in the all-important delegates count, but has been weakened by his failure to clinch the nomination.
Photo: Reuters
Romney scheduled a series of events in Illinois yesterday, starting with a pancake breakfast in Moline, followed by a gathering with voters in Rockford and a town hall meeting in Vernon Hills.
Puerto Rico, where 20 delegates are at stake, is being courted by Republican candidates, in part because the broader US Hispanic vote is seen as crucial.
Santorum found himself in hot water this week after suggesting that the territory would need to make English its official language before it could become the 51st US state.
English and Spanish are currently recognized there, and Romney told reporters in Puerto Rico — where he held a raucous street rally in San Juan on Friday night — that the island’s language status need not be changed in order to seek statehood.
Romney, Santorum and former US House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich have all said they would back statehood for Puerto Rico, as long as the territory’s voters support it in a November referendum.
Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, was in Puerto Rico early on Saturday, where he visited a local fruit market and told reporters he was “cautiously optimistic that we’re going to do well in Puerto Rico.”
Meanwhile, Santorum kept up a frenetic pace, heading to Louisiana, which holds a primary on Saturday. He was due back in Illinois for more campaigning today.
The fierce Republican campaign came as Obama flew home to Chicago on Friday for a lucrative fundraiser with his Democratic Party, upping efforts to pad its re-election campaign war chest.
In Illinois, Santorum took direct aim at Obama in a speech to a suburban Chicago high school, where he drilled into the president’s policies.
“You have a president of the United States who does not believe America was a great country until the government took money from you and redistributed it back to others,” Santorum said.
“America is great because it was founded great,” he said.
Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic and opponent of abortion and gay marriage, is seen as the most conservative Republican candidate vying to take on Obama in November, but his ability to win over centrist and independent voters is doubted.
The former Pennsylvania senator is making an aggressive push in Illinois, adding campaign stops and launching ads attacking Romney for raising taxes while governor of Massachusetts, and supporting the Wall Street bailout and government control of healthcare.
Romney has responded by pouring millions of US dollars into local ads and moving up plans to campaign in Illinois.
“Right now, under Barack Obama, the federal government is standing in the way of economic recovery,” Romney said. “I have a plan to get it out of the way and get the economy growing.”
A Santorum victory in Midwestern, industrialized Illinois could prove a far more significant upset than his recent wins in the Deep South states of Alabama and Mississippi, where evangelical voters carry more weight.
It would also give Santorum important momentum going into Louisiana and contests in Wisconsin, Maryland and District of Columbia on April 3.
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