Winning Without Money

By Reid Wilson

February 10, 2012 | 9:58 AM

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Mitt Romney has won two nominating contests by spending millions of dollars, and with the help of millions more from a supportive super PAC, on television advertising. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina by pursuing the same ad-heavy strategy, to the extent his poorer campaign could.

But Rick Santorum's campaign has won four primary and caucus states in a much different manner: His campaign and its affiliated super PAC haven't spent the kinds of big bucks the others can afford.

By all accounts, Santorum's campaign should have desperately needed every penny in those three states. After coming in a distant third in Florida, Santorum sat mired in third place in national surveys; Gallup's tracking poll showed Santorum at just 16 percent between Jan. 31 and Feb. 6, six points below Gingrich and 21 points behind Romney.

But Santorum's wins this week in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri were notable for the lack of money spent in each state.

A pro-Santorum super PAC, the Red White and Blue Fund, spent just $126,000 on television advertising in the Minneapolis market (the rough equivalent of 680 gross ratings points and the same amount the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC spent) and less than $100,000 in Missouri. Santorum's campaign spent about $40,000 on cable advertising in Minnesota and another $43,000 on cable ads in Colorado -- the merest drop in the bucket and certainly not enough spending to swing the race.

So how did Santorum, without a win since Iowa, running on financial fumes and struggling to break the narrative that the race had come down to a two-man contest between Gingrich and Romney, pull out a win? Look no further than Houston, Texas.

Santorum, after all, had received backing from a large gathering of evangelical leaders in Houston last month. Gingrich's allies at the time claimed the vote was rigged, but there's no denying Santorum has had the most success with evangelical voters in the Midwest; in Iowa, Santorum won one-third of all white evangelicals, according to exit polls, 14 points higher than his closest competitor. In fact, Santorum won more Iowa evangelicals than Gingrich (14 percent) and Romney (14 percent) combined.

In advance of this week's contests, Santorum spent a ton of time at mega-churches where evangelical voters congregate. He spent last Sunday at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where he addressed 3,400 parishioners. And that effort paid off: Santorum outperformed in rural, heavily evangelical areas of Minnesota; he won more than 50 percent of the vote in seven of the nine Minnesota counties that border Iowa (That's a good region for him: Santorum won seven of 11 Iowa counties that border Minnesota), and he dominated the smaller counties in the Iron Range. All told, Santorum won all but five of Minnesota's counties, and he tied Rep. Ron Paul in Lincoln County, on the South Dakota border.

Santorum won every county in Missouri's non-binding beauty contest primary, but he won by the largest margins, percentage-wise, in more rural areas. Santorum carried six northeastern Missouri counties and nine in the southwest corner of the state with more than 60 percent of the vote, vastly overperforming his statewide total; the northeastern counties are part of Little Dixie, conservative farming territory that traditionally voted Democratic until recent decades. The southwestern corner, around Springfield, has always been a heavily Republican bastion -- it's where former Sen. John Ashcroft, the presidential candidate from 2000 who most courted evangelical voters, got his start (Then again, he did pretty well in the big cities, too; Santorum won 53 percent of the vote in St. Louis County and nearly 49 percent in Jackson County, home of Kansas City).

Santorum's Colorado victory, perhaps the most surprising of the night, is perhaps the most easily understood: Santorum won support last month from Dr. James Dobson, the Colorado Springs-based evangelical leader who sports a nationwide following. Santorum won El Paso County, Dobson's home base, by 16 points; his 1,800-vote margin there was half the 3,600-vote margin by which Santorum won the state. Romney won more populous counties around Denver and Boulder, but Santorum's margins in the rural parts of the state were enough to make up the difference.

In short, Gingrich's people may have accused the gathering of evangelical leaders in Houston of stacking the deck for Santorum. But there's mounting evidence that Santorum's campaign, which looked like it was on its death bed just last week, has found new life, thanks to the voters closest to those evangelical leaders.

Now if only they had some friends in Arizona and Michigan.