GREEN BAY, Wis. — With Newt Gingrich unlikely to pick up many delegates in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, his state campaign director, Robert Lorge, said his mission after that vote will be to help the former House speaker persuade what he calls “soft delegates” to support him.
Those “soft delegates” amount to Wisconsin’s three Republican National Committee delegates, plus the three delegates from each of the eight congressional districts who could become unbound at the convention.
“Newt is going to be focusing on soft delegates, unbound delegates, and of course all of the delegates are unbound after the second ballot,” Lorge told FOX News.
Gingrich has said he will remain in the race until Mitt Romney wins the 1,144 delegates that would secure him the Republican nomination. Lorge believes Romney will not reach that threshold, leading to a contested Republican National Convention this August.
“This election is going to be very much like 1920’s Warren Harding Republican Convention,” he said. “General Leonard Wood went in there with 30 percent of the delegates and thought he had it made. Warren Harding went in with six percent of the delegates. After ten ballots, Harding had 70 percent.”
Lorge told FOX News that in conference calls with the national team there has been discussion about the possibility of consolidating Gingrich’s delegates with those won by Rick Santorum in order to overcome Romney’s delegate lead.
“I imagine there’s going to be a lot of negotiation and compromising between the pro-Newt Gingrich and the pro-Rick Santorum delegates,” he said. “You may have a Newt Gingrich-Rick Santorum ticket. You may have a Rick Santorum-Newt Gingrich ticket. Nobody knows how that ticket’s going to work out. But I imagine it’ll end up being something like that.”
Lorge said he has confidence that delegates will see Gingrich as the only candidate with the experience and temperament to be in the White House.
“We have a republic for a reason so that wiser decisions, calm decisions can be made in the best interest of the nation as a whole and that is what Newt Gingrich is all about,” he said.