Gingrich Setting Sights on Texas Primary
Newt Gingrich at a campaign stop in West Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 17, 2012. Photo by Bob Daemmrich, Texas TribuneAudio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is trying to push Texas back into the spotlight of the GOP primary contest.
Texas is a winner-take-all state, and it has 155 delegates up for grabs. Only California has more. In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Gingrich said his path to victory leads straight through the Lone Star State.
“We want to get to Georgia, to Alabama, to Tennessee. We want to get to states, Texas,” Gingrich said. “We believe that when Texas is over, we’ll be very, very competitive in delegate count.”
University of Texas political scientist Jim Henson says Gingrich is banking on winning over Republicans who would have backed Gov. Rick Perry.
“It’s hard not to expect that Newt Gingrich would have something of a fighting chance in Texas as, again, the Southern conservative candidate,” Henson said. “Mitt Romney’s had support among some financial sectors, but he’s never really set the state on fire. So it makes sense that at least in the abstract Newt Gingrich would be planning on this.”
The latest poll, in January, showed Gingrich and Romney running almost neck and neck in Texas. But that was almost a month ago, before Perry dropped out of the race.
