DENVER On Wednesday morning, Feb. 1, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were just leaving Florida, after Romney bludgeoned Gingrich in the Sunshine States primary the previous night.
Unnoticed by most of the political world, Rick Santorum arrived at Garcias Mexican Restaurant in a south Denver suburb.
As about 150 Republicans munched through the $14 breakfast buffet, Santorum told them they and their fellow Coloradans could hit the reset button on the GOP campaign for the presidency.
A week later, Santorums prediction came true. Colorado Republicans defied the polls and catapulted Santorum into the spotlight with a win at the state caucus. He also trounced Romney in Minnesota and Missouri.
Even close supporters didnt expect it.
I was surprised, too. I fully expected him to come in second, said former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, one of the few big-name Republicans to endorse Santorum in Colorado.
Romney campaigned in Colorado by paying scant attention to his GOP rivals and instead criticizing President Barack Obama about the economy.
Santorum, on the other hand, went after Romney as too similar to Obama to offer voters a contrast in November something that appealed to Tancredo.
Tancredo expects that a slowly improving economy will help the presidents campaign.
Without that issue, Romney has absolutely no other real cards to play, because hes not ideological. If you dont have the economy, then youre going to have to battle on issues, on ideas, Tancredo said.
Supporters of both candidates acknowledge that the caucus attracted a select sliver of Colorados nearly 800,000 registered Republicans.
The folks who come out to the caucuses are the most loyal of the loyalists, said Assistant House Majority Leader Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs. I dont think theres a lot that needs to be read into the results.
Waller supports Romney, but voters in his home county of El Paso ran up the score for Santorum. So even though Romney won Denver and most of its suburban counties, he wasnt able to catch up.
Santorum also won nearly everywhere in rural Colorado. He took the Four Corners, the Eastern Plains and even populous Weld and Larimer counties.
Romney notched wins in the Interstate 70 ski corridor, as well as the ranching/oil and gas counties in Northwest Colorado.
Romneys wins came in either Democratic or swing counties. That matches the perception of him as the moderate candidate, said Bob Loevy, a retired Colorado College professor who closely tracks state politics.
Romneys campaign wrongly assumed that because he had easily won the 2008 caucus over John McCain, history would repeat itself, Loevy said.
What people forgot was John McCain was considered in many ways more liberal than Mitt Romney, he said. The rule in the Republican Party is the most conservative candidate tends to win.
The Republican contest is playing out on two levels, Loevy said. The most visible one is the momentum contest, and Colorados results helped Santorum seize the lead in that race. National polls have him pulling into a tie or even a lead over Romney.
The second level is the scramble for the 1,144 delegates the winning candidate will need to become the GOP nominee at this summers national convention.
In most years, Loevy said, one candidate wins the momentum contest so convincingly that the everyone else drops out before the delegate contest really begins.
This year, though, Loevy is intrigued by the possibility that candidates will still be slugging it out in the middle of April, when Colorado awards its 36 delegates at the state and congressional district conventions.
The struggle for control of the Colorado delegation (at those conventions) could be vitally important to who gets the nomination. We could very well not be out of this at all, Loevy said.
