Republicans make final push before Southern primaries

The top three Republicans running for president closed their Mississippi and Alabama campaigns Monday with distinctly different appeals in the staunchly conservative Southern states, whose verdicts in Tuesday’s primaries could alter the course of the party’s nominating season.

In Biloxi, Mobile, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, the White House hopefuls jockeyed for favor among the evangelical Christians who hold sway in the region, but also among a smaller group of more secular Republicans who could prove crucial in what is shaping up as a tight race.

Mitt Romney added a dash of Southern flavor to his otherwise staid, and familiar, pitch on the economy, raving about Mississippi catfish at a morning stopover in Alabama on his way to Florida to raise campaign money.

GOP race: State-by-state results

“That’s a fine Alabama good mornin’,” Romney said with a twang to the few dozen supporters who braved a drenching downpour to sing “Happy Birthday” to him outside the Whistle Stop diner in Mobile.

The former Massachusetts governor described rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as a pair of Washington old-timers unsuited to fix a bloated government that needs the know-how of a successful businessman.

“If you think that just having the same people go to the same place, but just in different chairs, is going to make things different, why, you can vote for them,” Romney told the crowd.

Santorum, who hopes that wins in the Deep South will establish him as Romney’s lone viable challenger for the nomination, sought to persuade conservatives that only he would uphold their values. At an energy conference in Biloxi, he also hammered Romney and Gingrich for supporting, years ago, steps against what he called the hoax of “man-made global warming.”

And in Tuscaloosa, Santorum — wearing cowboy boots — dropped by the legendary Dreamland Bar-B-Que to sample the pork ribs, which he proclaimed “absolutely awesome.” The former Pennsylvania senator used the occasion to swat down concerns by would-be supporters that he can’t survive the convoluted delegate accumulation process that Romney, so far, is winning.

“This map is looking better and better,” he said, naming Illinois, Louisiana, Texas and, not surprisingly, Pennsylvania as states where he expects to do well.

But it’s Gingrich who has the most to gain — or lose — in Tuesday’s voting. Like the others, he took pains to bond with the South’s culturally conservative voters, but with the advantage of having long represented a Georgia congressional district that once reached from the Atlanta suburbs to the Alabama border.

At the Biloxi energy conference, the former House speaker poked fun at tax breaks for the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid electric car.

“All the guys who buy pickups are now subsidizing the rich guy who’s buying the Volt,” Gingrich said. “But it’s not going to be a popular car, because you can’t put a gun rack in it.”

As the candidates crisscrossed the Deep South, television and radio ads touted each as the most conservative — or attacked others as ideologically impure. In an interview on Fox News during his stop in Alabama, Romney went after Santorum for his friendly ties to Pennsylvania labor unions and his Senate record on abortion and public debt.

“I find it interesting that he continues to describe himself as the real conservative,” Romney said. “This is the guy who voted against right-to-work. This is the guy that voted to fund Planned Parenthood. This is the person who voted to raise the debt ceiling five times without any compensating cuts.”

Romney also mocked Gingrich for describing him on Sunday as a weak front-runner. “If I’m a weak front-runner, what does that make Newt Gingrich?” Romney asked with a chuckle. “Because I’m well ahead of him.”

For Gingrich, the fight to revive his foundering campaign in Mississippi and Alabama has drawn mainly on public anger over rising gasoline prices. The Biloxi conference offered a friendly setting for him to bash President Obama’s energy policies, a theme that all three candidates relished putting to full use Monday.

“If you read the president’s energy speeches, he is in cloud cuckoo land,” Gingrich told the energy-industry crowd.

For Santorum, the prospect of Gingrich victories in the South is especially bleak. He is counting on Gingrich quitting the race, strengthening his own standing against Romney.

Expectations for Romney are low in the region, despite relatively heavy advertising by him and his backers. The wealthy New Englander is not a natural fit with local voters, although he tried to compensate Monday by campaigning with comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who became famous for his redneck jokes, and by sharing his delight over a recent meal in Mississippi.

“I had catfish for the second time,” he told the crowd. “It was delicious, just like the first time.” (In January, Romney told a South Carolina crowd he was not “a catfish man.”)

Romney also risked dredging up memories of the political misfortune that befell him in 2007, when he said he hunted “small varmints” like rabbits and rodents. “I’m looking forward to going out and hunting with you sometime,” he told a local supporter in Mobile. “And you can actually show me which end of the rifle to point.”

In Birmingham, Gingrich one-upped Romney’s comment last week that he had eaten grits and liked it. “This morning when I had grits,” Gingrich told a Republican crowd, “I thought it was a very normal thing to do.”

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

john hoeffel@latimes.com