Romney Barely Wins Michigan     Permalink

In the all-important (for this week) primary in Michigan, Mitt Romney narrowly defeated Rick Santorum 41% to 38%. This tiny win will stave off howls of anguish from Republican elites hoping for a late entrant into the race, but the fact remains that nearly 60% of the voters rejected Romney, making him one of the weakest front runners in modern times. Even in Mormon-heavy Arizona, Romney was not able to get the majority of the voters to support him. Here are the results:

Noteworthy is that 9% of the voters were Democrats, which is allowed by Michigan law. They supported Santorum by a margin of 53% to 18% over Romney. Without them, Romney's margin would have been slightly higher.

On Saturday, Washington state holds its caucuses, then it is on to super Tuesday on March 6, when 10 states vote. These are Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. Romney should be able to win Massachusetts and neighboring Vermont. Gingrich can probably win his native Georgia, but the rest (except for Virginia) are up for grabs. Virginia will be an interesting contest because it will be a one-on-one race between Romney and Ron Paul--Gingrich and Santorum failed to qualify for the ballot. All the other states are likely to be hotly contested. The most important of the bunch is delegate-rich Ohio with 66 delegates, second after Virginia's 76, which will surely go to Romney.

With all the hoopla, it is sometimes easy to forget that the race is really a battle for delegates. In Arizona, Romney won all 29 of them. In Michigan, the results aren't clear yet but he probably won about half of them. According to the latest count, Romney has 163 delegates, Santorum has 83, Gingrich has 32, and Paul has 19. Romney is clearly not going to deliver a knockout blow at any point, but by gradually winning a few delegates here and a few there, he is piling up a lead and that is what really matters. With 43 delegates at stake in Washington state and 419 up for grabs on super Tuesday, we should have a much better view of where the race stands in a week. And keep in mind, starting April 1, all the primaries and caucuses are winner take all, making it much easier for Romney to turn small victories like the one he achieved in Michigan into large additions to his delegate count.

Olympia Snow Announces Her Retirement     Permalink

In a huge blow to Republicans' hopes at capturing the Senate, moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) announced her retirement yesterday, putting this otherwise safe Republican seat in play. Despite the fact that Gov. Paul LePage is a Republican, Maine is fundamentally a very blue state and in an open race, the Democrats have an excellent chance of picking up this seat. In fact, in the wink of an eye, it suddenly became the Democrats' best shot at a pickup, overriding even Massachusetts, where Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is locked in a titanic battle with consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren.

Since this news came completely out of the blue (basically, Snowe, who is extremely wealthy, said the Senate is so dysfunctional that she doesn't want to be part of it any more), nobody has announced his or her candidacy yet. Nevertheless, Maine's two representatives, Chellie Pingree and Michael Michaud, both Democrats, are surely thinking hard about it. Pingree is probably the more ambitious of the two and is likely to make the run. She comes from a political family, with her daughter, Hannah, having served as speaker of the Maine house of representatives until forced out by term limits.

Currently, the Democrats hold 53 seats in the Senate, so the Republicans need a net gain of three seats to produce a tie (good enough if they capture the vice presidency) or four seats for outright control. North Dakota is a likely Republican pickup, and unless former senator Bob Kerrey runs in Nebraska, the GOP is likely to pick up the seat of the retiring Democrat Ben Nelson. But the Republicans have vulnerabilities too. Democrats have good chances to pick up Republican seats in Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. In the Silver State, Dean Heller was appointed to the Senate when former senator John Ensign resigned under pressure after it came out that not only was he having a long affair with the wife of his chief of staff. Then his wealthy parents tried to buy the chief's silence by giving him $96,000 which would be legal if they were genuinely gifts but would be illegal if they were in return for his silence, a tricky point to prove in court either way. Republicans didn't want it to come to a court fight so they put immense pressure on Ensign to quit the Senate outright, which he did.

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