Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is falling so far behind Mitt Romney in the race for Republican delegates that his best chance might be in states that voted weeks ago.
The chief rival to the front-running Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum is trying to improve his lot in places such as Iowa and Washington state, where local caucuses were just the first step in determining delegates to the Republican National Convention.
In those states and a few others, supporters are now preparing for county, congressional district and state conventions, where the campaigns hope to keep their delegates — and possibly poach some from other candidates.
Mr. Santorum’s delegate count could use a boost. He trails Mr. Romney by 300 and would need to win 74 percent of the delegates in the remaining primaries to clinch the nomination before the national convention in August. So far, Mr. Santorum is winning just 27 percent, according to the tally by the Associated Press.
But the Santorum campaign predicts that he will significantly increase his delegate haul in caucus states, primarily at the expense of the former Massachusetts governor.
“The Romney campaign likes to talk about how they have this superior organization in these caucus states, and therefore, they are going to perform well,” said John Yob, Mr. Santorum’s national delegate director. “If you believe the Romney campaign’s spin that they have this superior organization, but yet they’re losing these contests, it must mean they have a deficient candidate who is unable to appeal to the base of the party.”
The Romney campaign calls that assessment laughable and questions whether Mr. Santorum has a sufficient organization to compete in upcoming primaries while also trying to rally supporters in states that held caucuses weeks or months ago. This weekend, for example, Louisiana holds its primary Saturday, the same day county conventions kick off in Washington state.
Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney’s political director, notes that Mr. Santorum didn’t get on the ballot in Virginia or the District of Columbia and failed to file full slates of delegates in Ohio and Illinois.
“You’re all of a sudden going to be able to organize at a state convention, a county assembly, and start stealing delegates from us?” Mr. Beeson said. “We have a plan in place. We will maintain and increase our delegates at the caucus level.”
Mr. Romney leads the race for delegates with 563, including endorsements from Republican National Committee members who automatically attend the convention and can support any candidate they choose. Mr. Santorum has 263 delegates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has 135 and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has 50.
It takes 1,144 delegates to win the Republican nomination to take on President Obama in the fall.
Six states have held local caucuses that were only the start of a multistep process to win actual delegates. Together, those states have a total of 223 delegates, which will be up for grabs at county, congressional district and state conventions sprinkled throughout the spring.
In five of the states — Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine and Washington — the AP used local caucus results to project the number of national delegates each candidate would win if he maintained the same level of support throughout the process. The sixth state, Missouri, didn’t release statewide results from local caucuses, so it was impossible to make a projection.
Mr. Santorum has more delegates in the five states than any other candidate, according to the AP tally: 73, compared to 62 for Mr. Romney, 15 for Mr. Paul and none for Mr. Gingrich.
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