ST. LOUIS • Rick Santorum's bid for the White House received a welcome boost on Tuesday, with the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania performing strongly among Republican voters in three states, even if his win in Missouri was mostly symbolic.
Santorum, who is leveraging his appeal with social conservatives to make the case he is the leading alternative to GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, enjoyed his best night of the campaign since last month's Iowa caucuses.
Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses.
He also, by a wide margin, was the top vote getter in Missouri's "beauty contest" vote, which, because of an awkward attempt to comply with party bylaws, won't count toward awarding convention delegates.
Even so, Santorum invested more time and energy in Missouri than any of his primary rivals, seizing on a rare, if unconventional, opportunity to go head-to-head with Romney. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also hoping to keep pace with Romney but, for reasons that remain ambiguous, did not sign up for the Missouri ballot.
Santorum was the only candidate to do any meaningful campaigning in Missouri, appearing in St. Charles County and across the state last week. Santorum also apparently targeted likely voters with telephone calls, a sign that he was treating the race as seriously as a traditional contest.
On Tuesday evening, he returned to St. Charles, where in a room full of supporters at the St. Charles Convention Center, he took equal aim at his chief Republican rival and the incumbent in Washington.
"I don't stand here claiming to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney," Santorum said. "I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama."
Despite Santorum's momentum bump on Tuesday, Romney is still firmly ensconced as the front-runner. With convincing wins in Florida, New Hampshire and, most recently, Nevada, Romney brings a formidable advantage into the next round of primaries, including the vital "Super Tuesday" votes on March 6.
Final but unofficial results show that Santorum won every county in Missouri, and most, including St. Louis County, by a wide margin. Santorum captured 55 percent of the vote, compared to Romney's 25 percent.
"I congratulate my friend Rick Santorum on his win tonight, but the fact remains that this is a nonbinding primary, meaning Missouri's delegates are still very much up for grabs," U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a Romney supporter, said in a statement Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Missouri emerged as a quixotic marker on the campaign trail, a state whose attempts to stay within party rules essentially backfired, costing taxpayers close to an estimated $7 million for a vote that, because of Gingrich's absence from the ballot, had limited usefulness even as a straw poll.
Last year, the GOP-controlled Legislature in Jefferson City approved a measure that would have pushed back the date of Missouri's primary in order to avoid running afoul of party rules that allowed only a handful of states to hold a primary election before March 6. States risked losing convention delegates if they skipped ahead.
But the legislation that contained the new primary date was in a larger elections bill that was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, for unrelated reasons. When the effort to push back the election date died again in a special session, the state's Republican Party opted instead to select its nominee in caucuses next month.
But the Feb. 7 election remained, even if it was rendered inert.
The state Democratic Party urged its supporters to vote Tuesday, but with Obama's selection as the nominee assured, Democratic participation was more about obligation than urgency.
Some Republicans advocated scrapping the vote altogether. In a statement after polls closed, state GOP chairman David Cole acknowledged that a "nonbinding primary is certainly not an ideal situation," though it did generate some national attention on an election night with only two other states reporting results.
Election officials predicted a respectable turnout - about 23 percent, not dramatically lower then previous primaries - but the sparse showing at the polls suggested an even lower participation rate.
With almost all of the votes counted, St. Louis County reported a turnout of less than 8 percent.
Among those who did go to the polls in Missouri on Tuesday it was hard to accept the notion of an election with such little formal resonance. Some seemed to vote out of sheer habit.
"It counts because you need to know what the temper of the state is," said Marjorie McFarland, 83, who was the only voter in the polling station when she cast her ballot Tuesday afternoon in St. Louis.
Mark Eisenberg, who came to the polling station later, was also striving to ascribe meaning to the results.
"It has to count for something - if only statistics," Eisenberg said. "It's a matter of record."
Tuesday's vote presented the best opportunity for Santorum, the narrow winner of the Iowa caucuses, to make the case that he is the best choice for Republican voters unhappy with Romney. Gingrich did not even sign up for the ballot, a move he has called a "conscious decision."
Santorum made his pitch directly to Missouri voters last week, telling voters in Hannibal, Lee's Summit and Columbia to send a message, even if they couldn't, at least for the moment, help him secure any convention delegates.
The strategy appeared to work, with his strong showing Tuesday in Missouri reflective of a motivated conservative base.
"We like his conservative views on things; we like his family values," said Geri Thwing, a school bus driver from Franklin County.
Thwing said she wanted to give Santorum "a boost and to show him that the people here in Missouri do support him."
Missouri Republicans will meet in local caucuses on March 17.Depending on whether Santorum can turn Tuesday's progress into a surge, the Missouri caucuses could prove even more meaningless than the primary vote if the GOP nominee is already decided, a distinct possibility given Romney's current edge.
HOTEL TAX PASSES
Voters in St. Peters on Tuesday approved a 2 percent city tax on hotel rooms, with a 55 percent majority in complete but unofficial returns.
Officials said the tax will raise about $200,000 annually and will be used to pay costs related to tourism, such as maintaining the city's Rec-Plex. The total tax on hotel rooms in St. Peters will increase to 14.55 percent.
Patrick O'Connell of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed to this story.
