Newt Gingrich 2012 presidential campaign

Newt Gingrich for President 2012
Campaign	2012 Republican Party presidential primaries
Candidate	Newt Gingrich Former U.S. Representative from Georgia Former Speaker of the House
Affiliation	Republican Party
Status	Suspended (May 2, 2012[1])
Headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia
Key people	Vince Haley (Manager) Patrick Millsaps (Chief of Staff (February 3 – May 2, 2012)) R.C. Hammond (Press Secretary) Joe DeSantis (Communications Director) Amy Pass (Finance Coordinator) [2][3][4]
Receipts	US$24,110,410 (2011-06-30)
Website
Newt 2012 (archived - May 1, 2012)

This article is part of a series about Newt Gingrich
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The 2012 presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House, began shortly following the 2010 midterm elections. He was politically active during the midterm elections, and helped several Tea Party-backed Republicans with his endorsements and fundraising abilities.

In early 2011, he chose to run for president and left his position as a political analyst for Fox News to seek the 2012 Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.

He suffered significant campaign staff troubles in June but by November had revived his campaign with a new more tech savvy staff, including many Tea Party leaders, such as National Digital Director, Chris Horne, from the Charleston Tea Party and Gerri McDaniels, founder of the Myrtle Beach Tea Party. With these proven grass roots leaders and through very aggressive debate performances Gingrich took the lead in the southern primary states.

His flagship campaign strategy was the introduction of a new "21st Century Contract",^[5] which was an overhaul of the original 1994 "Contract with America". This new contract outlined very specific campaign promises, and the people responded favorably. Gingrich's numbers continued to rise and more middle ground voters were starting to support the Newt 2012 Movement.^{[neutrality is disputed]}

In November and early December 2011, Gingrich was the front-runner of the Republican primaries, gaining momentum in the early states of Iowa, Florida, and especially South Carolina.

South Carolina showcased a high-tech campaign strategy that included phone calls, polling, door to door and a very successful digital media campaign, directed by South Carolina Director, Chris Horne. In one month, the campaign organization enjoyed greater fund-raising success than it had in all its previous months put together, and polling found the electorate had a more favorable opinion of Newt among conservatives, Tea Partiers, and moderates, who had long been former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's strongest constituency.^[6]

By January, however, Gingrich's polling success had attracted renewed media scrutiny. His support began to wane and he was fourth in the first two contests of the 2012 primary season held on January 3 and 10, a result attributed to a wave of opponent-financed attack ads and the fact that Newt Gingrich had pledged to run a "Clean Campaign", which meant no attack ads. His biggest donors were not happy with this and demanded the former front runner to "Take the gloves off".

He subsequently focused his attention on front runner Romney, dubbing him a "timid Massachusetts moderate." After strong debate performances in the week prior to the South Carolina primary, he managed to revive his campaign by winning all of that southern state's delegates on January 21. Although Gingrich captured 32% of the vote in Florida on January 31, the Romney campaign took 46% to win Florida comfortably in the increasingly bitter contest.^[7] After low percentages of the votes in early February, the "Newt 2012" campaign counted on a strong showing in the March votes in the South, particularly in Alabama and Mississippi.^[8] Gingrich came a close second in both, and announced he would not drop out.^[9]

On April 25, 2012, he announced he would suspend his campaign on Tuesday, May 1, and endorsed Mitt Romney.^[10][11] He withdrew from the race on Wednesday, May 2.^[1]