Opinion: Breaking News: Mitt Romney makes last stab at California

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California is so important to the faltering presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney that on the eve of Super Tuesday, the 60-year-old former governor flew all the way across the United States to give a 10-minute speech in Long Beach tonight.

He got at least one vote for his effort.

Then he got back on his chartered plane and is flying overnight now to West Virginia to address the state GOP convention Tuesday morning.

Romney told hundreds of raucous supporters -- and The Times’ Seema Mehta -- in a chilly airport hangar that he feels a ...

groundswell of support mounting in California and that he is the true conservative candidate in the race for the GOP nomination. (A Romney campaign spokesman estimates the crowd was at least 1,000.)

“This is a pivotal race, and the course of America is going to be set by what happens’ here, he said, ‘and I think the course of our party is going to be set by what happens in California tomorrow.”

The crowd was friendly as Romney went through his standard stump speech, saying Washington is broken and had failed for decades to fix Social Security, rein in spending, balance the budget and hold itself to high ethical standards, a swipe at rival John McCain, who’s spent 25 years in Congress and won the last three major primaries despite doubts among many conservatives.

McCain hopes to win big across the country tomorrow, when Republicans will choose nearly half the convention delegates necessary to win the nomination, and perhaps knock Romney out. McCain has advertised heavily in the Golden State the last few days.

He’s changed his position on illegal immigration from last spring and is arguing strongly for securing the border first. But somehow it’s Romney who’s tabbed as the flip-flopper.

‘They told us they’d stop illegal immigration!” Romney said to tonight’s throng. And the crowd responded rhythmically, “And they haven’t!”

“It’s time for the politicians to go and the citizens to take over,” Romney shouted. “I need you guys to get out and vote tomorrow, I need you to get your friends to get out and vote tomorrow, make some phone calls … tell them California has something to say about the direction of our party and who our nominee’s going to be.”

It worked for at least one voter. Renee Jackson, an undecided Republican when she walked in, was dragged to the event by a friend. “Before, I was for none of them,’ said the 42-year-old Santa Ana resident. “They all talk, but they don’t do anything. He’s shown that he’s a little better than anyone else.” She’ll vote for Romney on Tuesday.

Her friend, Nikki Williams of Orange, supported Romney from the start and couldn’t hide her disdain for McCain. “He’s just got Democratic views,” said the 36-year-old.

The campaign decided to return to California for its ninth visit just 24 hours ago. The candidate began the day in Nashville, went to Atlanta, then Oklahoma City, then Long Beach and ended the day somewhere over mid-America.

Californians have been generous to Romney, donating $8.7 million in 2007, the most of any state. Romney had lagged in the polls until recently. As his strategists saw the rice tightening to a dead heat, they squeezed in an extra California journey and counted on television coverage to reach thousands more.

“There’s something happening here in California that’s big,” Romney said after the rally. “People in California are really concentrating on this race with renewed attention and they’re saying we want to have a conservative leader of our party, we want to have a president that adheres to the principles that made our nation great.

‘I’m getting greater support here in California than I had a week ago, and we wanted to come back and put an exclamation point on the kind of support I’m getting here in California.’

The campaign initially hoped to stage the event in Orange County, a Romney stronghold. But it couldn’t get landing space at John Wayne Airport. Long Beach was the backup. But it still drew a heavy contingent of Orange County voters and conservative politicians and pundits, including Dana Rohrbacher, Hugh Hewitt and Scott Baugh.

-- Andrew Malcolm