Republican Candidates Battle as Arizona and Michigan Races Tighten

In the brilliant sunshine of Arizona, Rick Santorum aggressively challenged Mitt Romney in a state where the Tea Party is strong and the politics of immigration are poised to take center stage at a debate on Wednesday night.

Ken Elzerman removed signs for Rick Santorum before Santorum's opponent, Mitt Romney, spoke at a factory in Shelby, Mich., on Tuesday.

When: Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time

Where: Mesa Arts Center in Arizona

Participants: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum

Sponsors: CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona

TV: CNN

Live blogging and analysis: nytimes.com/politics

A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.

Dennis Lennox carried Mitt Romney signs before a Romney appearance at a factory in Shelby, Mich., on Tuesday.

And in the gritty cold of Michigan, the advertising air war intensified, as Mr. Romney increasingly faced questions about his conservative credentials from voters in his home state, a place of grim economic news and plenty of cultural conservatives.

Together, the two states — separated by about 1,700 miles — are the immediate battlegrounds for a Republican presidential contest that appears to be tightening drastically in the week before voters go to the polls to award the biggest single-day cache of delegates since the race began.

Mr. Santorum held two events in Arizona on Tuesday as he sought to seize on anecdotal and polling evidence that Mr. Romney’s large lead in the state may be quickly evaporating.

Speaking to about 500 people at the Maricopa County Lincoln Day luncheon, Mr. Santorum tipped his hat to the Tea Party movement, many of whose members had packed into the large Shriners’ hall to hear him speak.

“We need to take everything from food stamps to Medicaid to housing programs to education training programs,” he said. “We need to cut ’em, cap ’em, freeze ’em, send ’em to the states and say that there has to be a time limit and a work requirement,” he said, the rest of his words drowned out by thunderous applause.

Mr. Santorum is scheduled to address Tea Party activists near Tucson on Wednesday.

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, who plans to make an endorsement in the race after the debate, said in an interview that Mr. Santorum was eroding Mr. Romney’s advantage because “he comes across as straightforward, honest and solid.” She said she believes that Mr. Romney is conservative, but that many voters do not.

Mr. Romney has been building an organization in Arizona for months, aided by an endorsement from Senator John McCain, the state’s senior Republican. But on the eve of the nationally televised debate, one of Mr. Romney’s top supporters in the state expressed concern about his chances of winning. Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party who endorsed Mr. Romney last year, said Tuesday that he was no longer certain that Mr. Romney would win the state’s primary. He said he believed Mr. Romney’s 20-point lead had evaporated, declaring, “Now it’s a dead heat.”

Mr. Pullen said Mr. Romney’s campaign had been unsuccessful — and, in his view, had not tried hard enough — in its effort to connect with Republican activists willing to unite around beating President Obama.

“There has to be some enthusiasm in the race,” Mr. Pullen said in an interview. “Right now there’s not much. I don’t regret my decision, I’m just frustrated. I think he’s honest and straightforward, but the real Romney needs to come out. We need to see the energy, and we need to see the passion we’ve seen from the other candidates.”

In Michigan, Mr. Romney held a town-hall meeting in Shelby to talk about the difficult economy in the state and his plans to help turn around the nation’s fiscal situation. Mr. Romney hinted Tuesday that he would soon unveil a new tax plan that would feature “a flatter, fairer, broader-based tax system.”

But voters at the town hall peppered him with questions about social issues instead, forcing him off message.

It was a vivid reminder of how much the Republican primaries next week may turn on terrain that has repeatedly frustrated Mr. Romney’s political ambitions this year: questions about his commitment to the conservative cause.

“I want to hear you say it,” said Feleiteau Epley, 58, to Mr. Romney at the Shelby Town Hall. “That you are 100 percent pro-life. No abortions.”

Mr. Romney did not oblige. Instead, he described himself as “pro-life” — making room for exceptions in the case of incest, rape and when the life of the mother is at stake — a position that left Ms. Epley, who is considering voting for Mr. Santorum, unsatisfied.

The latest Michigan polls generally show a tight race between the two candidates after a surge in support for Mr. Santorum. A Detroit News survey last week showed the race effectively tied.

Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Jeff Zeleny from Phoenix. Reporting was contributed by Michael Barbaro from Shelby, Mich., Katharine Q. Seelye from Phoenix, and Dalia Sussman and Allison Kopicki from New York.

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House Members Face Tough Senate Races

It has not worked out that way. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has announced it would spend $200,000 broadcasting gauzy advertisements promoting the energy positions of Mr. Berg, a House freshman. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report downgraded the race to a tossup.

And Mr. Berg’s Democratic challenger, Heidi Heitkamp, a former state attorney general, has begun tearing into his brief record in the terribly unpopular House of Representatives. “The people of North Dakota, like the people of this country, believe Washington, D.C., is badly broken,” Ms. Heitkamp said.

Republicans, who need a net gain of only four seats to guarantee control of the Senate, have long been optimistic that they could capture the majority because they are defending just 10 of the 33 seats up for grabs. But their task is complicated by the fact that many of their candidates are sitting or recent members of the House, which polls show to be deeply unpopular.

In the 15 races ranked as most competitive by The New York Times, Republicans could field current or recently departed House members in eight of them; Democratic House members are top candidates in four Senate races.

Races that were not supposed to be all that close are looking more like barn-burners, in large part because one of the standard-bearers carries the millstone of his or her current position: member of the House.

House membership is “more a liability than I’ve ever seen it,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “We go through periods when Congress is less popular than other times, but Congressional approval ratings right now are so abysmally bad, so unbelievably bad, it has to rub off on members seeking higher office.”

Just west of North Dakota, Montana’s endangered freshman Democratic senator, Jon Tester, is going up against the state’s lone House member, Denny Rehberg. Todd Akin, a veteran Republican representative from Missouri, is in a tough primary to decide whether he will challenge Senator Claire McCaskill, who is considered vulnerable.

Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, remains favored to take the Senate seat of Senator Jon Kyl, who is retiring. But Mr. Flake now faces a spirited challenge from a former United States surgeon general, Richard H. Carmona, running as a Democrat and an outsider. And Representative Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, has an uphill fight to unseat Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat.

Democrats have their own struggles. The Senate contest in New Mexico between Representative Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, and former Representative Heather Wilson, a Republican, is considered close. In Wisconsin, Republican campaign operatives are hammering the House record of Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, as she gears up her campaign for a Senate seat. The House records of both Representative Shelley Berkley, Democrat of Nevada, and Dean Heller, appointed to the Senate from the House, will feature heavily in their Senate contest.

And in the tossup race for an open Senate seat in Hawaii, former Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, is likely to brand her once-favored challenger, Representative Mazie Hirono, a creature of the hated House.

But comparatively speaking, the problem in some races may be especially acute for Republicans, who must contend with both Congress’s overall approval rating and the damage that has been done to the Republican brand, Mr. Rothenberg said.

Members are making the best of it. Mr. Rehberg said individual members of Congress were “not as unpopular” as the institution itself. Besides, “Montanans don’t sit around saying, ‘Boy, I hate Congress.’ That’s something for the pollsters and the media to feed — and do,” he said.

Mr. Flake said his record of angering leaders of both parties with his crusade against pet projects financed by earmarks — a crusade that led to his removal from the House Appropriations Committee — would inoculate him from attack.

“I could see how it would be seen as a negative for some if they’re seen as just part of the institution, but if you’re seen as fighting the institution, it’s a plus,” he said.

But Democrats happily e-mailed around links to a Web video put together by Mr. Flake’s Republican challenger for the Arizona Senate nomination that portrays Mr. Flake as a career politician, and Carmona campaign aides say Mr. Flake’s reputation as a rebel is more a fixture of Washington than Arizona.

Opponents eager to tie all the House members seeking a Senate seat to the body they are leaving will make few distinctions. The National Republican Senatorial Committee last week tried to tar Representative Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, a Roman Catholic alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, with the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans provided by Catholic charities and universities offer free birth control to women. Mr. Donnelly is running for the seat of Senator Richard G. Lugar, a Republican.

Ms. Baldwin, of Wisconsin, was criticized for missing House committee votes on an energy bill but making time to appear on Ed Schultz’s liberal radio show. After Ms. Baldwin introduced legislation codifying President Obama’s “Buffett Rule,” which would increase the tax rate for many people who earn more than $1 million a year, Republicans denounced her for seeking to raise taxes on “American families and small businesses.”

Mr. Mack, of Florida, was hit both for House votes he took — like opposing an increase in the debt ceiling — and votes he missed, like repealing the president’s health care law.

The North Dakota race has been among the major surprises as it has tightened due, at least in part, to dissatisfaction with the perceived performance of Mr. Berg, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

To exploit any weakness, Ms. Heitkamp is going hyper-local with her campaign. While Mr. Berg talks up conservative national issues like a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, she emphasizes budget cuts to the Route 83 Bypass at Minot, road repairs at Devils Lake and essential air service subsidies to Jamestown.

Mr. Rehberg acknowledged that his House seat puts him in a tight spot. The message that Tea Party voters sent in 2010 was that Republicans should stand firm on deep spending cuts, regardless of the consequences. But independent voters are now howling at what they see as Republican obstructionism and demanding more cooperation.

“It creates conflicting things in the governing mind,” Mr. Rehberg said. “That’s why this is going to be a very close election.”

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