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Michigan Says Yes To Romney

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By JULIET EILPERIN and MICHAEL D. SHEAR, The Washington Post

Published: January 16, 2008

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary Tuesday, seizing his first big victory in the Republican presidential contest and immediately blunting the momentum of his chief rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Romney's triumph in the state where he was born and where his father served as governor further rearranges a GOP field in which no candidate has been able to win more than one major contest.

McCain won the New Hampshire primary after former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee topped the Iowa field.

Romney arrived in Michigan in desperate need of a win after losing in two states where he spent heavily and set up large organizations in hopes of building an insurmountable lead.

Voters rewarded him with a first-place finish that gives his candidacy new energy. Romney has remained near the bottom in national surveys of Republicans.

"Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," he said Tuesday.

He will now face another test Saturday, when South Carolina holds the first Southern contest of the primary season. He pulled his television ads from the Palmetto State last week to focus on Michigan but will head there today for a bus tour through the state.

Huckabee, who placed third in Michigan, has spent most of the past week in South Carolina, visiting churches in the hopes of appealing to the state's large evangelical community. Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee will make what could be his last stand there.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, is spending all his time in Florida, which votes Jan. 29.

For McCain, the Michigan loss interrupts the momentum he gained with his New Hampshire victory. The longtime senator and former prisoner of war has surged to the top of national polls in recent days.

"For a minute there in New Hampshire, I thought this race was getting easier," McCain said Tuesday night in conceding defeat, adding he will continue because he does not "mind a fight."

Even before voting ended, the candidates turned their attention to South Carolina. McCain began running a new ad in the Palmetto State on Tuesday and headed there before the polls closed in Michigan.

Shortly after arriving, McCain's team responded to the Vietnam Veterans Against McCain, a group that has blasted the senator's military service.

One flier shows a picture of a bloated McCain with "Songbird" and "An Enormous Crime, The POWs I Helped Leave Behind" printed next to his face. A separate mailer alleges McCain received medals despite having spent little time in combat.

The campaign released a statement from Orson Swindle, who was a prisoner of war with McCain in Vietnam and who said McCain never told the North Vietnamese anything.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I know because I was there," Swindle said.

The intense GOP battle for Michigan began a week ago.

Romney made himself a champion of the state's beleaguered automobile industry and promised to make the faltering economy a priority during his first 100 days in office.

"A lot of Washington politicians are aware of the pain, but they haven't done anything about it. And, of course, I hear people from time to time say, 'Well, that's Michigan's problem,'" Romney said in a speech. "But that's where they're wrong. What Michigan is feeling here will be felt by the entire nation unless we win the economic battle here."

The speech - and others like it - were an appeal to the residents of Michigan, who have been among the hardest hit by the nation's economic slowdown. The state's unemployment rate is the highest in the country, at 7.4 percent, and the mortgage crisis is severe.

The son of a former car company chief, Romney also pledged to ease fuel efficiency standards and to spend billions of dollars in federal money to bolster automakers.

Michigan held a Democratic primary in name only. All of the Democratic candidates except Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York withdrew their names from the ballot after the national Democratic Party punished Michigan for holding its primary too early by stripping the state of all its delegates to the party's national convention in August.

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