Thanks to conservative columnist Dennis Lennox for providing these excerpts from the new book by Dan Balz of The Washington Post, “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America” which is out today.
Balz, one of the top field reporters in the business of covering campaigns, writes in detail about the Michigan primary contest and the near-panic within the Romney camp for fear that the Mitten State could become the candidate’s Waterloo.
Page 214: Describing the GOP primaries leading up to Michigan, Balz writes:
Nerves were on edge in Boston. “They were saying [Michigan] was Waterloo,” Matt Rhoades recalled. “Mitt Romney’s Waterloo. We thought everything was on the line in Florida. But then it seemed like everything was on the line times two in Michigan.”
Romney had good reason to be nervous. A public poll of Michigan (continues on page 215) Republicans taken at the weekend by Public Policy Polling showed Santorum leading Romney by fifteen points. The campaign’s internal poll taken a few days later put Santorum’s advantage at eight points --- enormously troubling to his team for a state where he had deep family roots and had won in 2008. Katie Packer Gage, who was directing the Michigan effort, was deeply worried and during one morning staff meeting let her emotions get the better of her. “I felt like nobody thought we could win Michigan,” she later said. “And I believed that if we lost Michigan that our campaign could be over. Pretty tough to explain to our donors how he would lose a state he won the time before and a state where his dad had been governor and a state we had always sort of said we were going to win.
We were very committed to that.”
Page 216: Romney’s team went to work to prevent a potentially devastating defeat. In the words of one adviser, “We built a fortress around Michigan. Mitt was there. Ann was there. We were in every media market. We were in every corner of the state.” Another adviser described the strategy this way: “Campaign hard, campaign real hard. I mean, just campaign as much as we could in Michigan. Upped our media buys some. Really worked our local surrogates, our talk radio surrogates. Worked out endorsement networks. But just to try to flood the zone as much as we could.”
Page 219: On the Sunday before the primary, Romney’s team decided to send him to the Daytona 500. It would be a way to show his affinity for cars and for a constituency important to the Republican Party. But the weather was rainy enough to wash out the race, and Romney managed to commit another of his verbal gaffes. As he was having his picture taken, someone asked him about his connection to NASCAR racing. “I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners,” he replied. By the time he returned to Michigan, Romney was in a bad mood, believing he had wasted the day when he could have been campaigning in Michigan, where it counted.
Page 343, Romney reflecting on the primaries to Balz:
Meanwhile, Santorum had taken the lead in Michigan, the next important contest which caused another moment of deep concern. “I looked and said, ‘Look, if he wins Michigan, it may be over.’ I mean, this is a state where I’m supported to win, because I was born there, my dad was governor there. If he wins, what’ll happen to Ohio? He’ll win Ohio. If he wins Michigan and Ohio, I’ve probably lost ….”
Just as a reminder, Romney squeaked out a win, 41-38 percent, over Santorum and the after-the-fact reaction from pundits was basically, "Well, of course he won Michigan ..."
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