Romney Wins Ohio, But Did Santorum Win Super Tuesday?

Rick Santorum supporters' last-minute robocalls in Ohio, spreading the accusation that Mitt Romney promotes LGBT rights, wasn't enough to win the pivotal state. But Santorum kept the race so close that networks waited for returns late into the night and began considering the state a virtual tie.

Romney has also been named the much clearer winner in Alaska, Vermont, Idaho, his home state of Massachusetts, and in Virginia (where he and Ron Paul were the only two candidates on the ballot). Meanwhile, Santorum won in Oklahoma and surprised with triumphs in Tennessee and North Dakota. The networks called the Ohio race for Romney late on Super Tuesday despite a strong push from Santorum, a former senator from neighboring Pennsylvania who kept polls close but lost a lead in earlier weeks.

"This is where we're from," Santorum said figuratively while celebrating in a blue-collar Ohio town. Romney and Newt Gingrich spoke on Tuesday from their actual respective home states of Massachusetts and Georgia, which was Gingrich's only win.

As had happened in Michigan, where Romney also won narrowly earlier in the race, pro-Santorum robocalls dialed homes during the moments before voters headed to polls. But this time they came from a new organizaton that teamed with Mass Resistance, an antigay group from Romney's home state.

Santorum's campaign has been propelled by social issues, and that was reflected at the final moment in robocalls.

"Rick Santorum is the ONLY candidate who can be trusted to uphold traditional marriage, a straight military, and the rights of American children to have both a mother and a father," the call claimed, according to a script distributed by the group, calling itself Jews and Christians Together.

"Please vote for social sanity and Rick Santorum, NOT for homosexuality and Mitt Romney," it said.

Romney is by no means a pro-gay activist. He favors a federal ban on same-sex marriage via an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He opposed repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" in the military but now is against reinstating it. And he regularly brags about siding with the Catholic Church in Massachusetts on whether it should have the right to discriminate against same-sex couples in facilitating adoptions.

The calls also oddly claimed that if the Employment Nondiscrimination Act passed it would be illegal "to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he's your kid's teacher." Whether Romney supports ENDA is unclear, since he told the Log Cabin Republicans in 1994 that he would sponsor the legislation if elected to the U.S. Senate but recently said ENDA would "open a litigation floodgate and unfairly penalize employers at the hands of activist judges."

For his part, Romney's campaign and supporters vastly outspent Santorum and Gingrich. Robocalls on his behalf in Ohio came from Barbara Bush, who called Romney her "friend."

Santorum's wins come on the heels of a winning sweep in contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. He campaigned vigorously in Michigan, the state where Romney was born and raised, but lost narrowly while virtually splitting the delegates.

Then Santorum lost in Washington state, where he had campaigned on the day that the marriage equality bill was signed into law.