BOWLING GREEN, OH -- Newt Gingrich admitted Saturday night in the Buckeye State both he and GOP rival Rick Santorum have made missteps in Super Tuesday contests.
Neither Gingrich nor Santorum’s names will appear on the ballot in Virginia, as they were not able to meet the threshold of required signatures. And in Ohio, Santorum failed to submit a full slate of delegates in nine of the state’s 16 congressional districts, making him ineligible to obtain all 63 delegates.
“To be fair, we had some problems in Virginia, Rick has had some problems here [Ohio]. We have more delegates in Pennsylvania than he does,” Gingrich told a handful of reporters following the Ohio 5th Congressional District Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner. “It will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next couple of days.”
Both Gingrich and Santorum spoke at the dinner located at Bowling Green State University just three days before the contests in 11 states.
Despite his setback in the Virginia primary, the former House speaker is confident about a win in his home state of Georgia, the state that awards the most number of delegates on March 6th.
“You know obviously you want to get as many votes as you can, but I said all along that Georgia was the key because if we didn’t do well in Georgia I thought we could not go on,” he said, noting that he will do better than Mitt Romney did in his home state. “I think my margin in Georgia is much, much bigger than his margin was in Michigan. So I’m pretty encouraged.”
But Gingrich’s biggest rival in the Southern states is Santorum, not Romney necessarily. Santorum is competing very hard in both Tennessee and Oklahoma – two states Gingrich himself also has his eye on. The gap between the former Speaker and the former Pennsylvania senator, Gingrich says, is narrowing.
“I think the margin between Santorum and me has closed very dramatically in the last 10 days,” he said. “And that’s part of this competition is to get back to a position to be able to compete head-to-head with Romney.”
Gingrich says his campaign will go up with a 30-second TV ad in states by Monday, pushing his message of $2.50 gas prices.
