Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney jetted around the Hawkeye State yesterday for one last lap to rally the troops as his campaign came to grips with the nightmare potential of losing both early deciding states and sinking untold millions of his personal fortune into those states for nothing. “We’re in a neck-and-neck race,” Romney told a crowd at the Mason City Municipal Airport last night before taking off in a chartered plane headed to a stop in West Des Moines.Meanwhile, Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, his leading rival for Iowa’s top spot in the GOP caucus, continued their feud to the bitter end. Romney wasted no time criticizing Huckabee’s late-night stop in Los Angeles to appear on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. “I guess he’s more focused on the caucus in L.A. rather than the caucus in Iowa,” Romney told reporters earlier in the day.
Romney’s campaign strategy staked the GOP nomination - and his political future - almost entirely on winning the two early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire and using that momentum to raise his profile and propel him through the rest of the primary season. But he’s done an about-face. “This campaign is going to get started in a big way with the voice of Iowans. But it’s not going to be over after Iowa. And it’s probably not going to be over after New Hampshire, either,” Romney told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday.
Romney has sunk $17 million of his own money into the campaign as of Sept. 30 and refuses to say how much more since then until figures become public.