Romney visits the valley
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KSNV coverage of GOP front-runner Mitt Romney visited the south side of the town to campaign, Feb. 1, 2012.
Sun coverage
It was a more relaxed Mitt Romney that stopped in Las Vegas Wednesday night than we’ve seen elsewhere on the campaign trail.
He was coming off a big win in Florida. The crowd was cheering with almost as much gusto as a Ron Paul-congregation as Romney derided President Barack Obama and recited forgotten verses of “America the Beautiful.” His handlers even let him work the room in a blazer, instead of shirtsleeves.
“I’m so happy to be back in Nevada — what a beautiful place it is,” he told a crowd of about 700 supporters in a warehouse at Brady Linen, a laundering facility in Las Vegas. (It was one of the nicer-smelling campaign stops.)
“I love it here. As we flew across the desert, the landscape is just breathtaking and of course you go from the desert into the mountains of Tahoe ... It’s just such a wonderful state with just such extraordinary people.”
Romney’s flowery view of the Silver State is colored, no doubt, by the fact that its residents — or at least its Republicans — are equally (though slightly less poetically) enamored of him.
“I’m not emotional, but I think he’s the right person to run for president,” said Matt Metge of Las Vegas, 47, who is unemployed and looking for a job in management. He voted for Romney in 2008 and plans to again on Saturday.
In 2008, Romney won the state’s Republican caucuses with over 50 percent of the vote; Ron Paul, who came in second, trailed with only 14 percent.
This year, his lead is somewhat narrower but still sizable. The latest polls put Romney a comfortable 15 to 20 points ahead of his next challenger, Newt Gingrich — far more than he won by in Florida.
Romney is responding by beginning to act like the presumptive Republican nominee. His 20-minute speech Wednesday night focused almost entirely on President Barack Obama, and the crowd reserved its loudest cheers — “Mitt, Mitt, Mitt” — for his harshest critiques of the president. The cheers reflected more excitement in the candidate’s ability to win in November than excitement about the candidate himself.
“Sober,” is the word Robert Marcus, a retired insurance agent from Las Vegas used to describe the way he believed he and others were approaching Romney’s candidacy. “Because the country is broken and we’re just about at that tipping point where if it’s not fixed, we won’t recognize it in five years.”
“I’m glad he doesn’t get the same sort of reception (as Ron Paul),” said Denise Myatt, 58, a full-time Avon sales representative from Las Vegas who supported Jon Huntsman before she switched to Romney. “For me, it’s about the policy. I really think a businessman is what we need as president.”
“I think he will be inspirational, more, as time goes on,” said Charles Ridgley, a retired systems analyst from Las Vegas who voted for Romney four years ago. “You know, inspiration and hope is always good. But inspiration and hope don’t put food on the table.”
The other Republican candidates in this race — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and Gingrich and Paul especially — are in no way ready to hand Romney the Nevada caucus, much as he seems a shoo-in. All arrived in Nevada several hours before Romney, who took a detour through Minnesota, which votes Tuesday.
But Romney’s toughest and loudest challenge since the election calendar turned to Nevada has been from Democrats, who went all-in picketing and protesting his campaign in anticipation of his arrival.
“Mitt Romney hasn’t offered a single proposal to lend a hand to America’s struggling homeowners,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters on a Romney-focused conference call Wednesday afternoon. “If his position on foreclosures wasn’t bad enough, consider his extreme positions on immigration ... And seniors in Nevada should know that Mitt Romney will come here and try to tell them ... that he and Republicans won’t go after Social Security or Medicare. Hogwash.”
But while Democrats hope those are the issues that move independents, they’re the furthest thing from what Romney believes will drive people to support him.
“If you’re looking for someone who will promise you cradle-to-grave benefits from the government ... then that’s not me,” Romney told the crowd. “We will balance our budget, we will rebuild our economy to make it the strongest in the world, and we will be proud we continued to be the shining city on a hill lighting freedom for the entire planet.”
For all the back and forth between Obama and Romney, there is still Saturday’s caucus, which Romney needs to win, and win big: The bigger the win, the more momentum Romney builds for the rest of the February nominating contests.
Romney has neither the highest favorability ratings — that distinction goes to fourth-place Santorum; nor the most committed crowds — Paul still claims that mantle.
But as the crowd’s response signaled, neither of those indicators are as powerful as winning. And if Romney can do that convincingly enough — and some pollsters are predicting he could break 50 percent again — it may be all he needs to sweep up other supporters in the tide.
“I’ll be honest with you, I’m becoming pretty apathetic,” said Alissa Metge, 47, a dog trainer who attended the Romney rally with her husband. “It is just this country’s in a bad place right now, and I don’t really know that anybody can fix it. But I’m willing to give him a try.”
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