With economic concerns on the minds of most Americans, Romney and President Barack Obama already are jockeying for an edge. Obama generated a flurry of headlines last week by saying, “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” Many viewed that as a shot at Romney despite an Obama spokesman’s denials.

On Tuesday night in Manchester, N.H., after another string of primary victories, Romney recalled the hardships his father faced growing up.

“I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, this extraordinary land, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company,” Romney told the crowd. “Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.”

George Romney was born July 8, 1907, in Chihuahua, Mexico, where his grandfather, Miles Park Romney, and other Mormons had moved to avoid persecution and U.S. laws against polygamy.

Miles Park Romney had five wives and 30 children, and fled to Mexico after passage of the 1882 Edmunson Act that barred polygamy. George Romney’s father, Gaskell Romney, did not have multiple wives.

“At 5 years old, Dad and his family were finally living pretty well. They had a nice home and a small farm, and Dad even had his own pony, called Monty,” Mitt Romney wrote in his book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.”

George Romney’s father, Gaskell Romney, was a carpenter who led a prosperous life in a Mormon colony in Mexico, according to the “The Real Romney,” a book written by two Boston Globe reporters. But turmoil from the Mexican revolution later forced the Romneys and other Mormon families to flee back to the United States.

The family suddenly went from owning a large Mexican ranch to being nearly penniless, and the family moved from house to house in California, Idaho and Utah as they struggled to build a new life.

“Dad used to regale us kids with claims that one year in Idaho his family lived on nothing but potatoes — for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Mitt Romney recounted in his book.

Over time, though, Mitt’s grandfather, Gaskell Romney, became prosperous, building some of the finest homes in Salt Lake City, according to the Globe book, but along with many other Americans suffered financial setbacks during the Great Depression.

“He never took out bankruptcy, which he could have done several times,” George Romney wrote of his father, according to the Globe book.

George Romney worked as a plasterer during high school and later attended four colleges, but never graduated. He spent two years as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland. His first exposure to politics was in 1929, as an aide in Washington, D.C., to Democratic Sen. David I. Walsh of Massachusetts.

He went on to work at ALCOA and the Aluminum Wares Association. His first job in Detroit came in 1939 when he was local manager of the Automobile Manufacturers Association.

He later became head of American Motors and Michigan’s governor. Romney gave up the governor’s office in 1969 to become secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon administration.

George Romney’s success ensured a more privileged path for his son, Mitt Romney, who was raised in the posh Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills and attended an elite prep school before receiving degrees from the business and law schools of Harvard University.

Titled “50 Things You May Not Know About Rick Santorum,” the pamphlet played up his role in boosting federal spending for food stamps, schools, heating aid for the poor, Amtrak, the environment and prescription drugs for seniors — programs more often championed by Democrats and derided by conservatives like the GOP primary voters Santorum now courts.

A sampling:

—”Rick has been one of the Senate’s most active leaders in fighting funding to battle world AIDS and to help eliminate world poverty, working closely with Bono, the lead singer of U2.”

—”Rick is the author of the ‘Pet Animal Welfare Statute’ … (that) cracks down on puppy mills, who harm animals at the expense of unknowing pet owners. Rick has been praised by the National Humane Society for his work on this issue.”

—”Rick wrote legislation that would increase the national minimum wage.”

—”Rick joined with Democratic Senator Chris Dodd to introduce legislation to battle Lyme disease.”

As a conservative challenger trying to shake Romney’s grasp on the nomination, Santorum is taking a different approach, including cutting government spending and scaling back entitlement programs. His home state is one of five holding presidential primary elections on April 24.

“We need a conservative,” Santorum said recently on “Fox News Sunday” in explaining why he’s staying in the race. “We need someone who can be a contrast with Barack Obama, not the same old tired establishment person that’s going to be shoved down our throat.”

In 2006, Santorum was trying to do the opposite: soften his conservative edge and present a more moderate face to voters in the traditional battleground state of Pennsylvania against Democrat Bob Casey. Casey’s opposition to abortion and gun control undercut Santorum’s conservative base of support.

Back then, Santorum boasted about bringing home federal dollars for some of the same programs he now ridicules as big-government bloat.

Santorum’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

On the presidential campaign trail, Santorum rails against big government and says he wants to cut $5 trillion in federal spending over five years. He calls for freezing defense spending for five years, along with money for social programs such as Medicaid and education. To spur the economy, he wants to repeal a slew of government regulations put in place by Obama. This emphasis on more conservative positions is not unlike what his rival, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, has found himself doing throughout the primary season.

The 2006 pamphlet showcased Santorum’s votes “for record levels of funding for Pennsylvania’s public schools” and touted his efforts to win federal funding for early childhood development programs such as Head Start, which is designed to serve poor children and offers a broad range of social services.

Yet in the presidential contest, Santorum has taken a different tack, arguing to dramatically curtail the role states and the federal government play in running schools. He touts his home schooling of his own children and criticizes early childhood education programs as an attempt by government to “indoctrinate your children.”

“Not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business and put it back with the local and into the community,” Santorum said in a debate earlier this year in Arizona with his GOP rivals.

The brochure played up Santorum’s efforts “to make sure Pennsylvania seniors have a prescription drug plan under Medicare” that dramatically lowers costs and prevents seniors from financial ruin due to prescription drug costs.

In the Senate, Santorum was a leading advocate for extending Medicare prescription drug benefits to seniors, a measure that conservative critics criticized as a huge entitlement expansion that would swell the federal budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. As a presidential candidate, he’s called that vote a mistake.

Pennsylvania has long been a swing state that can’t be taken for granted by either party. To win there, conservative candidates often need to appeal to moderate voters.

As a senator, Santorum went to bat for his state’s interests. He battled food stamp cuts and pressed for more federal money for Amtrak and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides fuel aid to the poor. Such programs are popular in Pennsylvania, but they’re seen by many conservatives as examples of a bloated federal government.

“He doesn’t sound like a small-government conservative,” said pollster and political science professor G. Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “Santorum was a big-government conservative. The evidence was overwhelming.”

Pennsylvania is a large, diverse state that has undergone a transition from its old reliance on manufacturing and coal to an economy based more on technology and information, Madonna said. Santorum and his Pennsylvania congressional colleagues were often responding to the many demands created by those changes, he added.

“Deficits back then were not nearly as much a part of the political discussion as they are today,” said Madonna, citing the rise of the tea party in the 2010 races. “It was a different era.”

Santorum’s reach for the political center fell far short, largely because of his controversial views on hot-button social issues such as same-sex marriage and his support for President George W. Bush and the Iraq war. He lost his re-election bid by a 59-41 percent margin, the first time the state had elected a Democrat to a full term in the Senate since 1962.

Given how Romney has already relied heavily on key elements of that winning strategy — the biting attack ads, the imposing fundraising advantage — to pound his GOP presidential rivals, there’s little to suggest he won’t return to that strategy for the likely fight against Obama.

Ben Coes, Romney’s campaign manager in 2002, said the multimillionaire businessman won the election because he didn’t worry much about whether voters liked him. Coes said that same dynamic will apply for November’s presidential election, too.

Then and now, “voters were electing someone to clean up a mess,” said Coes, who has no role in Romney’s current campaign. “He ran as the toughest guy with the most experience to go in there and clean up a mess. … It’s the reason he got elected in 2002, and it’s how he could get elected in 2012.”

Romney’s campaign declined to comment.

Romney swept into the governorship with an aggressive campaign that played up his image as a political outsider, played down his GOP affiliation and pounded Democratic foe Shannon O’Brien as a hapless watchdog of the state’s cash in a wave of attack ads. O’Brien was the state’s first female treasurer and a tough, seasoned campaigner.

Buoyed by the national media attention he received for turning the scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City into a success, Romney returned to Massachusetts and targeted O’Brien with a pledge to “clean up the mess on Beacon Hill.”

He cast her as beholden to labor unions, lobbyists and special interests, but especially to Democrats who controlled the Legislature. Romney tapped into a deep vein of voter frustration over patronage, ethics scandals, state budget deficits, job losses and a $1 billion tax increase.

“We wanted to tie a noose around Beacon Hill and tie it around Shannon O’Brien’s neck,” Coes said.

Romney won by 5 percentage points in the Democratic-dominated state by appealing to independent voters. But his efforts to shed his image as stiff and blow-dried, which endures to this day, mostly fizzled.

He stumbled by airing a pithy TV ad in which he and his wife, Ann, spoke tenderly about their courtship on a high school prom date and their enduring love for each other. “Ann’s just good to the core,” Romney gushed. The ad also featured Romney in a bathing suit frolicking with his sons atop a raft on a lake.

“Women found it to be pandering, people in general just thought it was out of touch with their lives that are maybe not so perfect,” O’Brien said.

Romney also tried to project a regular-guy image by staging “work days” at blue-collar jobs on garbage trucks and fishing boats, but those failed, too, coming off as overly scripted.

Rob Gray, a senior Romney strategist in 2002, conceded the “work days” and the ads showcasing Romney’s marriage were “self-inflicted” wounds that preceded a slide in the polls.

But Romney got back on track by slamming O’Brien with a barrage of TV ads depicting her as a lazy basset hound “watchdog” who dozed while suited men piled bags of stolen state money into a truck emblazoned with the “Enron” label. The ads cited the state’s billions of dollars in pension fund losses, including $23 million in stock from the Houston-based energy company that collapsed in 2001. O’Brien’s husband had been a lobbyist for Enron.

O’Brien said the image was unfair and inaccurate. “But when you spend a lot of money on ads like that, it was effective,” she said.

The attacks drove the race back onto Romney’s outsider theme in the final weeks of the campaign, helping him win over independent voters, who dominate Massachusetts elections.

“During those last three weeks, Mitt really took the gloves off,” Coes said. “He put aside efforts to be likable. He was disciplined and tight and tough.”

O’Brien countered by going after Romney’s business background. Romney amassed a fortune, now estimated to be as much as $250 million, by helping found the venture capital firm Bain Capital. Her ads cited Bain’s role in laying off workers in businesses it took over, but the spots never gained much traction.

O’Brien said Romney did a good job selling himself as the turnaround guy, the successful businessman who saved the Olympics. She recalled one TV reporter asking her what it felt like to run against an “icon.”

Romney also avoided the Republican label, pitching himself in the heavily Democratic state as a successful businessman capable of solving its fiscal woes. His moderate tack was a nod to demographics. Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 3-to-1 in Massachusetts and roughly half of voters are independent.

“I think people recognize that I’m not a partisan Republican, that I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive,” Romney told New England Cable News in 2002.

His political success that year was forged in hard-won lessons from his first foray into politics, a 17-point loss in 1994 to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Many thought Kennedy would be vulnerable given his hard-partying image and the 1991 Palm Beach, Fla., rape case against his nephew, William Kennedy Smith. Smith was acquitted, but Kennedy testified about taking his nephew and son Patrick for drinks at the bar where Smith met his accuser.

Romney hit Kennedy as a big-government liberal and avoided personal attacks.

But Romney’s candidacy withered under a barrage of attack ads that cast him as a greedy venture capitalist whose firm cut jobs and slashed salaries at companies it took over. Angry workers from an Indiana plant even trekked to Massachusetts to dog Romney, who never quite recovered from the negative onslaught.

Kennedy outspent Romney, pouring much of his money into attack ads.

“For Romney, it was a costly learning experience, but it was a learning experience,” said Tad Devine, a senior Kennedy adviser.

Romney made sure he had the money advantage in 2002. He raised $9.4 million, including some $6.3 million from his own pocket, and spent much of it on attack ads. O’Brien spent about $6.2 million on her campaign.

“Kennedy pounded him pretty good with the attack ads, and Mitt learned: Do it early, spend as much money as you can and keep it up for as long as you can,” said O’Brien.

The ad opens with a comparison of gasoline prices just before Obama took office — $1.83 per gallon on Jan. 19, 2009 — and the price three years into his presidency, $3.74 on March 12, 2012.

“Then and now,” the narrator says. “The difference: President Obama’s administration restricted oil production in the Gulf, limited development of American oil shale, and Obama personally lobbied to kill a pipeline bringing oil from Canada.”

A headline appears on the screen: “As gasoline prices rise, president’s ratings fall.”

The ad cuts to the voice of National Journal’s Major Garrett during a March 12, 2012, appearance on CBS’ “This Morning”, saying, “At the White House for three weeks the word has been ‘deflector shield’ on gas prices. Put up the deflector shield.”

The narrator urges viewers to call and complain to the White House, “Tell President Obama bad energy policies mean energy prices we can’t afford.”

ANALYSIS: Republicans looking ahead to the fall election are seeking to tap into voter frustration over rising prices at the gas pump by blaming Obama for policies they claim are restricting U.S. oil production and pushing up energy costs. Frustration over rising gas prices promises to be front and center in the debate.

Gasoline hit a national average of $3.86 a gallon Wednesday. Obama has said drilling for new oil alone won’t solve the nation’s energy woes. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has called on Obama to fire his top energy advisers, calling them the “gas hike trio.”

The ad was timed to appear as Obama traveled this week to Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma for a trip to answer critics of his energy policies.

An Associated Press statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production contradicts the ad’s key claim. AP’s analysis showed no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

In other words, more oil production in the United States can’t promise lower prices. Sometimes prices rise as U.S. production ramps up, which is what’s happened over the past three years.

That’s because oil is a global commodity, and U.S. production has only a tiny influence on supply. Factors far beyond the control of a nation or a president dictate the price of gasoline.

When you put the inflation-adjusted price of gas on the same chart as U.S. oil production since 1976, the numbers sometimes go in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. If drilling for more oil meant lower prices, the lines on the chart would consistently go in opposite directions. A basic statistical measure of correlation found no link between the two, and outside statistical experts confirmed those calculations.

The AP analysis used Energy Department figures for regular unleaded gas prices adjusted for inflation to 2012 dollars, oil production and oil demand.

“Santorum’s real weakness is the economy,” the narrator says as the screen shows jumpy footage of Santorum talking with a background image of an abandoned factory.

“He’s never run a business or a state. His plan: ‘economic illiteracy,’ ‘inexcusable,’ ‘the worst idea of any GOP candidate.’” There’s a shot of a toddler in a crib as the narrator calls Santorum’s plan “economic illiteracy.”

“Rick Santorum: Another economic lightweight,” the narrator says as the screen shows side-by-side shots of Obama and Santorum. “Mitt Romney: Ready to ‘lead the nation to a new era’” and “with ‘the boldest GOP agenda since Reagan.’”

The ad closes with a beaming Romney meeting with workers and greeting an enthusiastic crowd from a stage.

ANALYSIS: In the final days before the hotly contested Illinois primary, Romney is trying to drive home his point that he is better equipped to lead the nation’s economic recovery, the thematic foundation of his candidacy. Romney wants to regain a jolt of momentum in the large industrial state while stopping the surging Santorum, who has been buoyed by a pair of victories over Romney in the Deep South states of Alabama and Mississippi.

As in several past contests, Romney and his allies are spending heavily on attack ads to gain an edge.

Romney bases his latest claims almost exclusively on commentary in various media that are included in small text that can be difficult to read as it scrolls across the screen. A line that Santorum’s “real weakness is the economy” comes from a headline on the financial website MarketWatch.

The line about Romney being “ready to lead the nation to a new era” is from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s endorsement of him. The closer about Romney having the “boldest GOP agenda” since President Ronald Reagan was pulled from an opinion piece by a blogger for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Romney, as a former governor of Massachusetts with a long record as a venture capitalist, is trying to play up his economic background by noting that Santorum, who spent much of his career in Congress and as a media commentator, has never run a business or a state.

Romney has played up his business background as proof that he has the know-how to turn around the nation’s ailing economy, and the ad tries to build on that assertion. Santorum often highlights his socially conservative views.

The former governor favors lower taxes, less regulation, a balanced federal budget and more trade deals to spur growth. He would replace jobless benefits with unemployment savings accounts. Santorum wants to spur job creation by eliminating corporate taxes for manufacturers, drilling for more oil and gas, and slashing regulations.

Romney and other rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have accused Santorum of turning his back on fiscal conservatism when he was a senator from Pennsylvania by supporting big-government spending programs. Santorum has countered by saying he is the true conservative in the GOP pack.