TAMPA, FLORIDA — Standing in the sparse crowd at Newt Gingrich’s Primary Night party in Orlando Tuesday night were Tony and Deanna Ortner, a local father and daughter duo of Gingrich supporters. I tried to talk to them about what went wrong for their guy in Florida, but they were much more interested in discussing what they said is the plan to fix Gingrich’s Virginia problem.
As you’ll recall, only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are on the Virginia ballot — denying Gingrich a chance at the state’s southern conservative Republicans, voters which he has done well with in the past. What’s worse, for Gingrich supporters intent on seeing the fight to the end, Romney can grab a whole bunch of delegates in the commonwealth with very little effort on March 6.
The solution is obvious, though politically tough. The Ortners told me Gingrich needs to get together with Rick Santorum and make a concerted effort to help Paul win. Nevertheless, I hadn’t heard it before, so I looked into it Wednesday. Turns out the Ortners aren’t the only ones talking about this.
I reached out to a few political observers in Virginia, and they said that the rumor of a Santorum-Gingrich anti-Romney pact is certainly flying around. The idea has been floated on some Paul-supporting websites. Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), a Romney supporter, addressed the rumor on a public radio show Tuesday.
“Well, I haven’t heard it, but it wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them do that. Probably if I were in their shoes I’d try to do the same thing.”
Bolling was pretty sure the plan wouldn’t work even if it is attempted.
“By the time our primary comes around, [Romney] should have a good head of steam behind him and hopefully we’ll be able to fend off Congressman Paul and any efforts that Speaker Gingrich and former Sen. Santorum might make here in Virginia,” he said.
I reached out to both the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns for comment; neither got back to me. But at this point, joining forces would be going against the way Santorum and Gingrich have been playing things post-Florida. Gingrich has made it very clear that Santorum needs to drop out and hand his conservative support to him, while Santorum gave a speech Tuesday night that attacked Gingrich and is already running ads against him. If the pair were to join together, it would probably be a little awkward at first.
Still, the rumors persist — partly, maybe, because Virginia wants to be an important player in the primary fight rather than just a guaranteed win for Romney. And partly maybe because the primary fight appears to be so predictable post-Florida that people are just looking for something new to talk about. But it’s possible that the rumor could be true — and that could make for a very interesting (if not entirely game-changing) Virginia primary fight next month.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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