“The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia — one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom.”
— Joshua Green, “The Front-Runner’s Fall,” The Atlantic, September 2008
“In a meeting room at the Palazzo hotel [in Las Vegas] over the past week, Newt Gingrich mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention in August.
“The crux of the former House speaker’s new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state’s delegates, how they’re awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win.”
— Amy Gardner, “Newt Gingrich campaign offers detailed plan to carry on,” Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2002
As soon as I read the article about Newt Gingrich’s weeklong Vegas strategy sessions, my mind clicked back to Josh Green’s fascinating article about Hillary Clinton’s doomstruck 2008 campaign. How had such an overwhelming front-runner, with so many built-in advantages over her rivals, managed to fumble away the nomination? Green’s article describes the basic error in about 170 words, summarizing the strategic assumptions contained in a March 2007 campaign memo written by Clinton adviser Harold Ickes:
Ickes believed that Iowa and New Hampshire could determine Clinton’s fate, and that the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries would determine the nominee. No mention was made of the delegates or the later-caucus states that actually figured so decisively.
Ickes seemed attuned to the asymmetric risk that accompanies overwhelming front-runner status: the collapse of momentum that would accompany an unexpected loss. He posited that Edwards and Obama could sustain losing Iowa and New Hampshire but worried that Clinton could not; he urged that she spend “substantial” time in Iowa; and he recommended a contingency plan that would haunt the campaign when his own budget team didn’t fulfill it. Noting the difficulty of raising more than $75 million before Iowa, Ickes stressed the need to maintain a $25 million reserve, presumably as insurance against a setback. The campaign wound up raising more than $100 million—but, according to The New York Times, by the time Iowa was lost, $106 million had been spent. The $25 million reserve had vanished, and the campaign was effectively insolvent.
This was a stunning revelation: The Clinton campaign burned through more than $100 million before it ever got to New Hampshire, didn’t think in terms of delegate counts, and did not bother to plan beyond the Super Tuesday primaries.
There are obvious parallels to the Gingrich campaign, on a smaller scale. Consider the matter of money: Gingrich spent more than $10 million before the end of 2011, entering 2012 with about $2 million cash on hand. By comparison, Mitt Romney spent about $36 million by the end of last year, entering 2012 with about $20 million cash on hand.
Yet the winner of the Iowa caucuses was neither Romney nor Gingrich, but rather Rick Santorum, who spent less than $2 million and had less than $300,000 cash on hand to begin 2012.
And it was not until last week — after the Florida primary — that Gingrich’s campaign staff sat down and calculated the remaining campaign schedule in terms of delegate counts.
There are obvious differences between the Democratic race in 2008 and the Republican campaign in 2012, of course: Going into 2008, the Democrats were fired up, having taken back Congress in 2006, and eager to recapture the White House they’d narrowly lost in 2000. John Edwards, John Kerry’s 2004 running mate, was a contender who’d spent four years building his campaign, especially in Iowa. And none of the GOP 2012 candidates, not even Romney, have the kind of fund-raising resources that enabled Hillary to raise $100 million in 2007.
Another glaring difference: The three-candidate race between Clinton, Edwards and Barack Obama that defined the early campaign for Democrats in 2007-08 was fairly stable. In 2011-2012, the “flavor of the month” cycles in the GOP campaign saw five major candidates flame out before the third contest of the race, the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina. Here is a helpful chart:
Candidate ……. Money Raised (12/31/11) … Quit
Tim Pawlenty ………….. $5.1 million …………….. Aug. 14
Herman Cain ………… $16.8 million ……………… Dec. 3
Michelle Bachmann … $9.2 million ……………… Jan. 4
Jon Huntsman ……….. $5.9 million …………….. Jan. 16
Rick Perry ……………… $19.8 million ……………. Jan. 19
(Source: Center for Responsive Politics)
Between them, these five candidates raised a total of $56.8 million, a sum greater than Romney’s $56.4 million, yet two — Pawlenty and Cain — quit before any votes were cast, and three more quit in a 15-day span between the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary. Both Cain and Perry have given Gingrich their endorsements, but he would surely rather have the $36.6 million that their campaigns raised (and mostly spent) in 2011.
It is remarkable that Santorum’s low-budget campaign out-performed all five of the candidates who quit before South Carolina, each of whom raised at least twice his 2011 total. It is furthermore remarkable that Gingrich, despite his vast fundraising advantage over Santorum, is trailing Santorum in polls of both Colorado and Minnesota, which hold caucuses Tuesday.
And yet, as Amy Gardner points out in her Washington Post article, the Gingrich campaign’s need for more money is now so desperate that the candidate’s time is being spent on fundraising efforts: “Gingrich . . . barely appeared in public during nearly a full week in Las Vegas to concentrate on raising money.”
More alarming than that, however, is the revelation that after just five contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada — Gingrich is already at such a disadvantage in terms of delegate count that even by his own estimate, he cannot hope to regain the lead before the Texas primary scheduled for April 3: “Our commitment is to find a series of victories which, by the end of the Texas primary, will leave us at parity with Governor Romney. And by that point forward, we’ll see if we can’t actually win the nomination.”
“We’ll see”?
Newt is dialing-for-dollars, trying to raise money to continue his campaign on the basis of “we’ll see”? And in point of fact, a pending lawsuit over re-districting means that the Texas primary is likely to be delayed well past the scheduled April 3 date.
The Gingrich campaign is faced with a math problem involving not merely delegate counts, but also time and money. An apparently high “burn rate” of funds means that Gingrich must raise large sums merely to keep his campaign going, and he must keep going for at least two months if he hopes to catch up with Romney, a hope contingent on his successes in the meantime.
The math problem is even tougher for Santorum — who got the bad news today that he failed to qualify for the ballot in Indiana’s May primary — but Santorum’s low-budget underdog campaign has a far lower “burn rate” compared to Gingrich, and can more plausibly maintain a “we’ll see” approach. Between now and Super Tuesday on March 6, the calendar looks like this:
Feb. 7
Colorado (caucus) ……………………. 36 delegates
Minnesota (caucus) ………………….. 40 delegates
Missouri (non-binding primary) … 0 delegates
Feb. 11
Maine (caucus) …………………………. 24 delegates
Feb. 22 — Arizona Debate (CNN)
Feb. 28
Arizona (primary) ……………………… 29 delegates
Michigan (primary) …………………… 30 delegates
March 1 — Georgia Debate (CNN)
March 3
Washington (caucus) …………………. 43 delegates
So there will be 202 delegates awarded before Super Tuesday, 100 of which will be awarded before the next debate on Feb. 22. It is possible that the debates could dramatically alter the race, shifting the momentum against Romney. But unless that happens, it’s difficult to see Gingrich winning any of those states, so that Romney’s advantage is likely to increase between now and Super Tuesday, when the primaries in Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma represent likely or possibly wins. Yet other states on the Super Tuesday calendar, including Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, look to be big wins for Romney, and it’s entirely possible that Romney will win more of the total 437 delegates at stake on March 6, increasing his margin still further.
By the morning of March 7, then, Gingrich could very well be in a worse position than he is now. And while unexpected developments in the next 30 days could shift the momentum against Romney, as of today, Gingrich is facing a very difficult political math problem.
