NEW YORK (RNS) — The Iowa caucuses revived Rick Santorum’s underdog presidential campaign. Now an influential assortment of Christian conservatives has moved to consecrate it.
On Jan. 14, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania sewed up the endorsement from a coalition of prominent national evangelical leaders. And he has basked in the glow of their affirmation.
“Every (GOP) candidate and campaign greatly coveted this endorsement,” said Hogan Gidley, Santorum’s national campaign spokesman. “Once Rick Santorum received the endorsement, all the other campaigns dismissed it, (but) they all had emissaries in the room trying to get the endorsement.”
Gidley predicted the endorsement would spark a late Santorum surge in Saturday’s South Carolina GOP primary, similar to the push that saw him come within eight votes of winning the Iowa caucuses.
“We were this far down six days out of Iowa, too,” Gidley said, alluding to Santorum’s double-digit deficit in the polls. “But this kind of endorsement is the shot in the arm that awakens the activists and gets them behind the candidate they can relate to and trust.”
At least until Saturday, evangelicals have elevated Santorum above his Republican rivals and installed him as the anointed conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.
The evangelical nod will provide access to finances that previously eluded Santorum.
Gidley wouldn’t give funding specifics, but said the campaign had been financially “blessed’ ever since Santorum became the consensus religious conservative candidate.
The cash should provide Santorum with the cushion to push on to the Florida primary later this month.
Even with the sanctified seal of approval bestowed upon Santorum, its effect is probably overstated.
“This certainly gives Santorum a kind of leg up, but the reason Santorum has been chosen is that he’s outperformed (Texas Gov. Rick) Perry and (former U.S. House Speaker Newt) Gingrich in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Jeffrey W. Robbins, a professor of religion and politics at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania.
“This is an effort to consolidate under one candidate, but that consolidation has really already taken effect,” Robbins said. “They’re kind of late to the party.”
Laura Olson, who teaches politics and religion at Clemson University in South Carolina, acknowledged the outward significance of the endorsement. But she said South Carolina conservatives won’t blindly follow it.
“They’ll be aware of these endorsements, but it isn’t the case that every evangelical Republican voter simply does what the pastor says they should do,” Olson said.
Further, she argued that the evangelical endorsement probably has arrived too late to have any substantive effect on Saturday’s primary.
“I can see a mathematical path for Santorum to win, but so many things would have to break his way for that to happen,” Olson said. “Had Santorum caught fire when Herman Cain was catching fire, then maybe folks start rallying around him and Gingrich sees the writing on the wall.”
Instead, Romney won Iowa and New Hampshire, is coasting to a probable win in South Carolina, and looks like the presumptive GOP nominee.
That has come largely from negative campaign ads that crippled Gingrich’s end-of-2011 surge. Gingrich, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and spent his pre-teen years in nearby Hummelstown, responded in kind.
Though pundits say the negative retorts have damaged Gingrich’s prospects, a South Carolina Gingrich campaign official says his fight back is playing well in the Palmetto State.
“People in South Carolina want you to stand up,” said William Wilkins, co-chair of Gingrich’s South Carolina campaign. “If people say something about you that’s not true, (South Carolinians) want you to call ‘em out on that.”
Wilkins credited Gingrich’s campaign counterattacks with reviving the campaign’s chances in the state. He said the strategy had been effective enough to lure “some folks who were heavy into fundraising” for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to switch last week and back Gingrich.
On Monday, Huntsman withdrew from the race and threw his support to Romney.
Wilkins said Gingrich’s South Carolina campaign is shifting from the evangelical-rich upstate and will
to mine votes from the less-strident midlands and lower state.
“The polls show without question that Romney is the leader at this point,” Wilkins said. “But if the true conservative candidates would circle the wagons around Newt, he would certainly win the South Carolina primary.”
However, the Republican candidate that South Carolina conservatives might be most comfortable with is Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who was born in Pittsburgh and attended Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
“He’s a Baptist” said Michael Vasovski, Paul’s South Carolina campaign chair. “So he’s got a connection spiritually with a large number of people here.”
Vasovski said Paul was “very well received” at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event hours before Monday night’s GOP debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Paul held the attention of the Christian conservative activist group for about an hour, Vasovski said.
Robert J. Vickers writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.