WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Mitt Romney is likely to formally seal the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday with a big victory in Texas that may give him a burst of momentum in his November 6 showdown with President Barack Obama.

Texas has 155 delegates at stake in its Republican primary election and Romney needs less than half of those to put him past the 1,144 threshold needed for the nomination.

Romney campaign officials think he will get enough delegates to put him over the top, a resounding achievement after a long, winding campaign battle that has seen him outlast a series of conservative rivals.

With a close fight brewing with the Democratic incumbent, a Lone Star state win will put a positive spin on the week for Romney, who is holding his own against Obama despite intense attacks against his record as a private equity executive and former Massachusetts governor.

Romney will not be in Texas. Instead, he will be campaigning in Las Vegas on Tuesday with a conservative rival he defeated for the nomination, Newt Gingrich, and real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

A victory will put to rest any lingering suggestion that Romney could face a conservative challenge at the Republican convention in Florida in late August as Gingrich had threatened to do when the race was still close.

“It means he is bullet-proof,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney is launching a push to appeal to Hispanic voters but has far to go to reverse a huge lead that President Barack Obama holds with this key voting bloc.

At a speech set for Wednesday to a Latino small business group in Washington, Romney is expected to stress his view that a healthy U.S. economy is the main issue for Hispanics in the November 6 election, as it is with all Americans – and that he has the ability to improve it.

But whether this argument will be enough to peel away many Hispanics from Obama is unclear. The outcome of the election may be at stake, with Hispanics representing key voting blocs in several pivotal battleground states. Hispanics also represent the largest minority overall in the United States.

Romney and his campaign aides are aware that the former Massachusetts governor has a problem when it comes to appealing to Hispanic voters after a bruising Republican primary battle that forced him to the right on illegal immigration.

“My only question is how well and how quickly are we getting the Hispanic effort going,” said an informal Romney adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The campaign needs to get on the air (with ads) and send him into some Hispanic events. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to get going.”

For Romney, the problems are legion when it comes to attracting Hispanics. His campaign is only beginning to stir.

He is just now out with his first Spanish-language television ad for the general election campaign, coming in after the Democratic incumbent has been on the airwaves in Colorado, Nevada and Florida since April 17, both on television and radio. The Obama team has already spent an estimated $1 million on Spanish-language ads.

HILLSBOROUGH, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney returned to his economic message on Friday, highlighting a “bridge to nowhere” rebuilt by stimulus money and warning the U.S. economy could suffer a fiscal crisis like California’s if he is not elected in November.

Rising in the polls this week, Romney is eager to follow through by hammering at the White House’s handling of the weak economy.

He used the backdrop of a 1860s-era bridge in New Hampshire to illustrate what he called the wasteful government spending of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan passed in 2009.

The stone bridge, rebuilt with more than $150,000 of stimulus funds, crosses a river but ends abruptly on one side with an 8-foot (2.4-metre) drop to a grassy field near a Ford dealership.

“This is the absolute ‘bridge to nowhere’ if there ever was one,” Romney told a crowd of supporters. “That’s your stimulus dollars at work – a bridge that goes nowhere.”

A notorious “bridge to nowhere” that connected the Alaskan mainland with an isolated island became a symbol of congressional pork-barrel projects, spurring public outrage and leading lawmakers last year to impose a temporary ban on earmarks – special-interest projects added to major bills.

Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, says he would cut spending and put America on the path to a balanced budget if he defeats Obama in the November 6 election. He pointed to the stimulus as an example of the president’s failed leadership.

May 18 (Reuters) – Is Mitt Romney an out-of-touch elitist and bully who led a rapacious business that killed common folks’ jobs?

That portrayal of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is the most frequent one painted by President Barack Obama’s campaign and its allies, but their line of attack has yet to hit home.

The former Massachusetts governor is rising in the polls, including a Gallup survey this week that showed 50 percent of Americans now have a favorable opinion of him, the highest yet.

Part of that may be due to a honeymoon effect for Romney as Republicans rally now that he has effectively clinched the party’s nomination.

It could also be a sign that Democrats’ attacks on him for cutting blue-collar jobs when he was head of the Bain Capital private equity firm have not resonated with voters as much as they had hoped.

“To some extent, Romney’s been inoculated against them,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.

A Fox News poll this week that showed Obama leading Romney overall nevertheless put the Republican ahead on handling of the U.S. economy and creating new jobs.

, May 16 (Reuters) – Mitt Romney joined congressional Republicans on Wednesday in attacking President Barack Obama’s handling of debt and deficits, a strategy that carries both risks and rewards for the likely Republican presidential nominee.

As a new battle looms in Washington, Romney put the deficit at the heart of his campaign at an event in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he spoke in front of a counter that clocked up the constant increase of America’s debt of $15.685 trillion.

Romney went after Obama for annual $1 trillion deficits, saying Obama had criticized his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, for deficit spending but has only made it worse.

“I find it incomprehensible that a president could come to office and call his predecessor’s record irresponsible and unpatriotic, and then do almost nothing to fix it and instead every year to add more and more and more spending,” Romney said.

Focusing on debt allows the former Massachusetts governor to widen the front in his assault on Obama’s handling of the economy, after concentrating most of his fire until now on his opponent’s unemployment record.

Romney’s effort may be rewarded by drawing more support from Tea Party fiscal conservatives whose No.1 issue is reducing the size of government. Many of them were cool to Romney during the Republican primary campaign and flirted with conservative alternatives such as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

But the risk for Romney is that his deficit rhetoric could be associated with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who was the politician mostly blamed from last year’s damaging fight in Congress over the debt ceiling.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s campaign released a video on Monday calling Mitt Romney’s private equity firm a job-killing “vampire” that ran a steel mill into the ground, signaling a new effort to carve into Romney’s image as a corporate success.

The Obama campaign’s six-minute video – a shorter version of which will air on TV stations in the key states of Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado – came on a day in which the president’s team sought to draw dramatic contrasts between Obama and Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president.

Two days after Romney tried to woo conservative evangelical Christians in a commencement speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Obama spoke at a women’s college in New York City and urged the graduates to fight for a more equitable and tolerant nation.

“Fight not just for a seat at the table,” Obama said, noting that women now make up nearly half the work force and have moved into leadership positions in many companies. “Fight for a seat at the head of the table.”

Later, the Democratic president attended two fundraisers in New York, including one with supporters from the gay community, co-hosted by openly gay singer Ricky Martin.

The fundraiser was held less than a week after Obama announced that he supported same-sex marriages, a move that thrilled the gay and lesbian community but may not play as well with independent voters whose support will be crucial for Obama in the November 6 election.

“We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody. That doesn’t weaken families, that strengthens families,” Obama said to applause.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign opened an assault on Mitt Romney’s background as a private equity executive on Monday with a video that seeks to undermine the Republican’s central argument for why he is qualified for the White House.

Romney’s record as an executive at Bain Capital, a firm that bought and restructured companies sometimes resulting in a loss of jobs, was a hotly debated topic during Romney’s Republican primary battle against Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and a host of other conservative alternatives.

Romney’s rivals mounted their attack after Reuters published a January special report examining a Kansas City, Missouri, steel mill that went bankrupt under Bain’s ownership.

Now the Obama campaign is telling the story of the GS Technologies mill to argue that the brand of capitalism Romney practiced at Bain benefited wealthy investors at the expense of workers.

The Democratic incumbent’s campaign released a six-minute video that featured the demise of the company, which Bain bought in 1993.

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked, and 750 people lost their jobs. Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees, according to the Reuters special report.

The Obama video was featured on a website it created, RomneyEconomics.com.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney battled to get back on his economic message on Friday after being sidetracked by a debate over gay rights and a reported bullying incident from 1965.

Romney’s drive to keep the focus on President Barack Obama’s handling of the fragile U.S. economy took a back seat this week when Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage, a move that energized his liberal base and gave the Democratic incumbent a splash of news coverage.

Obama’s decision on gay marriage, after resisting the step for two years, contributed to a big surge in fund-raising for his campaign. Obama hauled in $15 million at a single, star-studded event in Los Angeles where he played basketball on Friday with stars George Clooney and Tobey Maguire.

Far from Hollywood, Romney visited North Carolina, a state that will be central in determining whether he can defeat Obama in the November 6 election.

Romney skirted the same-sex issue in a visit to Charlotte and stuck to the economy, saying Obama represents “old-school liberals” who want to continue to borrow money from countries like China in order to spend it recklessly in Washington.

“This recovery’s been the slowest, most tepid since Hoover,” said Romney in a reference to Depression-era President Herbert Hoover from the 1930s.

Romney wants to avoid making same-sex marriage a major focus of the campaign because Obama is much more vulnerable on the economy. Polls show a growing number of Americans favor gay marriage, but the slow economic recovery is by far their major concern.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney apologized on Thursday for high school pranks that may have hurt others, after a report that he and other students at a Michigan school bullied a student who was presumed to be gay.

“I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended … obviously, I apologize,” Romney said in response to a Washington Post story that detailed a 1965 incident in which Romney pinned down a fellow student and cut his hair.

The apology came as Romney sought to contrast his opposition to same-sex marriage with President Barack Obama, who voiced his support this week in an ABC-News interview.

Obama’s political gamble to shift gears and now support gay marriage reverberated on the campaign trail. While it is unclear how big an impact the issue will have in the November 6 presidential election, battle lines were drawn.

Senior Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie said on Thursday the Romney campaign would use Obama’s gay marriage support to illustrate many differences between the Republican challenger and the Democratic incumbent.

“It’s an important issue for people and it engenders strong feelings on both sides,” Gillespie told MSNBC. “I think it’s important to be respectful in how we talk about our differences, but the fact is that’s a significant difference in November.”

Obama pivoted to support gay marriage after two years in which he said his position was “evolving” on an issue crucial to his liberal base. His move may help energize liberals who have not shown the passion for him that they did in electing him America’s first African-American president in 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For Democratic President Barack Obama, Republican-leaning Indiana suddenly might be a little more winnable in the November 6 election.

But North Carolina, a politically divided state where Obama will be in a close battle with Republican Mitt Romney, may have just gotten a little tougher for the president.

Those were among the themes to emerge from uprisings among conservative voters in each state on Tuesday. Indiana Republicans ousted their longtime senator, Richard Lugar, and North Carolina voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage, highlighting a politically touchy subject on which Obama clarified his views on Wednesday by saying for the first time he supported such unions.

In pushing aside Lugar, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate at 35 years, Indiana Republicans placed their bets on conservative Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock in the November race against Democrat Joe Donnelly.

The result will almost certainly make Indiana’s Senate race one of the marquee contests in November – and is potentially good news for Obama.

Without Lugar on the ballot, Democrats are certain to give more attention – and money – to Donnelly’s cause while trying to prevent Mourdock from adding to the growing ranks of compromise-resistant conservatives in the Senate, which Democrats are seeking to hold in the November election.

Analysts said more ads by Democrats, along with Lugar’s absence from the ballot, could help Obama in Indiana, which he won over Republican John McCain in the 2008 election but where he has trailed Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, in recent polls.