Romney targets California, caucus wins against McCain

DENVER—Republican Mitt Romney is conceding the bulk of the Northeast to rival John McCain, counting instead on his home state of Massachusetts, a split in California and wins in a series of caucus states to extend his presidential campaign beyond Super Tuesday.

Missing from Romney’s latest campaign schedule were winner-take-all states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which account for 180 of the 1,023 delegates at stake. The omissions were telling with voting in 21 GOP contests on Tuesday.

The former Massachusetts governor was in Colorado Friday and attended the funeral of Mormon church President Gordon B. Hinckley on Saturday in Utah. Romney also scheduled campaign events in Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and West Virginia before arriving home Tuesday.

Colorado and Minnesota are caucuses states where a grass-roots effort could help secure a win, while West Virginia will award its delegates at a convention Romney plans to address before flying to Massachusetts to both vote and await the returns.

Romney has also deployed four of his five sons to Maine, Montana and Idaho, which hold caucuses on Saturday and Tuesday, and Alaska, which has a party convention on Tuesday.

If he fails to capture enough delegates to offset McCain’s likely wins in other states and strong showing in California, where the Arizona senator has the backing of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Romney could end his campaign in Boston on Wednesday.

During a news conference Friday outside a Ford dealership here, he passed up three opportunities to declare he would carry on if he fails to surpass McCain in the Super Tuesday voting.

“I really thought it would all be over, you know, early in January, and now we’re going to go into February, and I just can’t predict what will happen in February,” he said, “so we’ll see what happens.”

This week the multimillionaire former venture capitalist authorized only a modest $3 million advertising buy, after committing $35 million of his own money last year in an effort to lock up the nomination early with back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.

While Romney won in Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada, McCain beat him in major head-to-head battles in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Huckabee prevailed in the leadoff Iowa caucuses. He has vowed to remain in the race, taking critical conservative support from Romney.

Currently, Romney trails McCain in delegates to the Republican National Convention, 83-59. A total of 1,191 are needed for the nomination.

Simple mathematics highlight the challenge confronting Romney.

California has 170 delegates at stake Tuesday, but it will award 159 of them — three at a time — to the winner in each of the state’s 53 congressional districts.

If Romney and McCain were to split those delegates, the biggest bloc up for grabs Tuesday, they would each claim about 80 delegates.

Of the remaining states where Romney is personally campaigning, Colorado (43), Minnesota (38), Illinois (57), Tennessee (52) and Georgia (72) award their delegates in proportion to the vote percentage received by each candidate.