Romney dropping the ball on early voters in Arizona.
Chuck Coughlin, who ran Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s 2010 campaign, said the relatively slow return rate for absentee ballots indicates Republicans are waiting to make up their minds, which may not be a good thing for Romney.
“People are holding on to their ballots to see how this evolves,” Coughlin said. “Mr. Romney has a lead and is comfortable down here, but I haven’t really seen evidence of that in the mailbox or in any particular aggressive effort here in Arizona. Mr. Santorum now is out here and is spending time and I think he’s going to try and leverage tonight’s debate performance with some kind of spike for him.”
Coughlin said Romney’s campaign has left the door open for Santorum by not more aggressively courting early voters. The Romney campaign isn’t on Arizona television at all, but the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future has dropped $348,000 on Arizona TV ads this week — 16 times what the Santorum campaign is spending, according to a source familiar with the ad buys. Santorum’s super PAC is not on TV here.
“That’s how you run good campaigns, that the way they get their ballots — they get a piece of mail from you. That’s not happening. I haven’t seen that from anybody in this cycle,” he said. “The perceived lack of organizational strength at the campaign level would lead one to believe that there’s a door open for Mr. Santorum.”
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