Rick Santorum Seeks Momentum Out West

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Rick Santorum's American tale has seized a theme from the film "Fievel Goes West."

The former Pennsylvania senator skipped a Florida ground campaign and crossed the Mississippi to concentrate on Colorado and Missouri; states where his campaign thinks Santorum can pull off primary surprises.

Rick Santorum

"It's looking real good [in Missouri]," one source in Santorum's campaign says. "The draw, right now, is very strong in our favor -- obviously some recent polls have been very positive towards us -- but I think it's going to be very interesting, at least, to see the head-to-head matchup with the senator and Gov. Romney here."

Santorum is a heavy underdog for Saturday's Nevada caucuses and his momentum has slowed since a surprise Iowa caucus victory on Jan. 3, but a Jan. 31 Public Policy Polling Missouri survey showed Santorum slightly behind Newt Gingrich and just ahead of Mitt Romney in the Show Me state. Gingrich, Santorum and Romney grabbed 30%, 28% and 24% of voter favor, respectively.

Missouri has an odd voting process in which the state will hold a non-binding Feb. 7 primary that Gingrich isn't on the ballot for, but the Missouri Republican Party will hold a March 17 binding caucus that Gingrich will be part of.

Santorum's numbers leap among Missouri Republican primary voters as Gingrich doesn't qualify for that ballot. In the primary poll, Santorum leads with 45% against Romney's 34%, the PPP poll found.

The latest Colorado poll came in the first week of December at the tail-end of Gingrich's November surge, and a month before the GOP primary season kicked off, but Santorum's people say the caucus-style state favors the retail political style of their candidate.

Another Santorum campaign source says that maybe its biggest get yet in Colorado is former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer's endorsement of the former senator. The source says many Coloradans consider Schaffer a major leader of the state's conservative movement.

Interest may have ratcheted up thanks to Schaffer's nod and the addition of support from former Rep. Tom Tancredo and former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton.

"It's kind of crazy here, we're doing the Weld County Lincoln Day Dinner on Saturday night ... they announced it on [Jan. 28] and they had 180 people who had already bought $50 tickets," the source says. "By Monday afternoon they had sold a capacity of 550 tickets and had to expand and create the whole standing-room-only section ... so we're actually kind of cautiously optimistic about Colorado."