By Alex Leary, Times Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
COLUMBUS, Ohio — With 10 states voting on Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney is looking for a knockout punch in the Republican presidential race.
But the first hit went to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who won Georgia. The state, which Gingrich represented in Congress for two decades, was decided as the polls closed at 7 p.m.
Not long after, though, Romney grabbed Virginia, where only he and Ron Paul qualified for the ballot, then Massachusetts and Vermont.
Rick Santorum scored a win in Tennessee.
But the big test is Ohio, where Romney and Santorum were running neck and neck. Other states were too close to call.
Gingrich was hoping for a better than expected showing in other states, including Tennessee, to support his argument that he should be given yet another chance at toppling Romney.
Gingrich vowed to continue, suggesting only he had bold solutions for the nation's problems, and he campaigned Tuesday in Alabama, which holds its primary next week.
"The truth is I have opponents who are, in a normal period, adequate," he said earlier in the day in Gwinnett, Ga. "But they don't have anything on the scale of change I just described to you."