close to call, the GOP battlefield shifts Saturday to Kansas — where Rick Santorum hopes for a momentum-changing win.
Santorum has been the only major Republican candidate to spend any time in Kansas ahead of the low-profile caucus, hoping to halt Mitt Romney’s Super Tuesday-fueled roll.
The former Senator from Pennsylvania criss-crossed the Sunflower State, hoping the same combination of Tea Party and evangelical voters that propelled him to a win in neighboring Oklahoma would do the same Saturday.
“We already have one President who doesn’t tell the truth to the American people,” Santorum said in Topeka, deploying one of his favorite lines of attack against his chief rival. “We don't need another one. Gov. Romney reinvents himself for whatever the political occasion calls for.”
Though Romney received the endorsement of Kansas icon Bob Dole, he has not campaigned there, apparently willing to cede the state’s 40 delegates.
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC spent more than $180,000 on television ads in the state over the last week, more than 20 times what Santorum and his allies spent in Kansas.
However, Gingrich himself isn’t campaigning there, scrapping a two-day swing through Kansas in order to focus on Alabama and Mississippi, which hold primaries on Tuesday.
Those contests have also become a referendum on Romney’s suspect appeal in the South, but a series of polls released Friday show that Gingrich and Santorum are splitting the conservative vote — giving the former Massachusetts governor a shot to finally end his losing streak below the Mason-Dixon line.
Romney was the choice of 35% of Mississippi voters surveyed by Rasmussen Reports, leading Gingrich and Santorum, who both snagged 27%. Another Mississippi survey had him in second behind Gingrich, but only by four points.
And in an Alabama Rasmussen poll released Friday, the three candidates were separated by just two points: Gingrich had 30%, Santorum 29% and Romney 28%.
Gingrich and Santorum, who have battled to be the conservative standard-bearer in the race, are banking heavily on a strong showing in the two states — realizing that a Romney win in the Deep South could effectively end the competition.
Gingrich, who is under increasing pressure to end his candidacy, dropped $124,000 on TV ad buys in Alabama and another $83,000 in Mississippi, while both he and Santorum scheduled a slew of events in the two states in the coming days.
Romney — who lost badly in previous Southern states like South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma — swung through Mississippi Friday and made another awkward attempt to connect with down-home voters.
“I'm learning to say y'all [and\] I like grits,” he said in Pascagoula, proclaiming that he was an “unofficial Southerner.”
“Strange things are happening to me,” he added.
jlemire@nydailynews.com
