LOS ANGELES _ On a day packed with California fundraising events to refuel his campaign, Newt Gingrich insisted Monday that he would not drop out of the GOP presidential contest even though polls show he is not now winning the argument against Rick Santorum that he is the best conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

The former House speaker also appealed specifically to California conservatives, promising to make the state competitive in the general election and pledging to take on the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled against the state's same-sex marriage initiative.

"This is a consistently bigoted, anti-religious court," Gingrich said, also pointing to its controversial decision that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Constitution. "I'd ask the Congress to look seriously at either impeaching or replacing the 9th Circuit."

In between fundraising events, he stopped at Cielito Lindo Restaurant in South El Monte to speak to more than 150 California Latinos who are backing his campaign. Many noted his proposal to allow some illegal immigrants who have been in the country for years to become legal residents.

Rosario Marin, the former U.S. treasurer from L.A.'s Huntington Park neighborhood, said Gingrich had dealt with the hot-button issue respectfully, praised his proposals and said he could get the job done. "You get to be speaker of the House because you're tough, you have an agenda and you can sell that agenda," she said.

Gingrich said his campaign had analyzed his losses since South Carolina and concluded he needed to change his strategy to focus more on his ideas and less on his opponents, whom he did not mention in his speech.

"I do dramatically better when I focus on the nation's problems and I focus on the nation's solutions. I don't do nearly as well when I focus on my competitors," he said.

Two nationwide polls released Monday show Santorum in a virtual dead heat with Romney, with one survey putting him 2 percentage points ahead and the other 2 points behind. Gingrich trailed Santorum by 16 points in the Gallup poll and 13 points in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Although no Republican presidential candidate has won in California since George H.W. Bush in 1988, Gingrich told the crowd he would make California competitive in the fall. "I believe, if we are prepared to campaign everywhere, that we can put California absolutely right in play, and we can do it by reaching out to everybody across the whole state," he said.

On other topics relevant to Californians, he called for the preservation of memorial crosses that came under fire for being on public land, knocked the Los Angeles teachers union for defending incompetent teachers and denounced regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency and Fish and Wildlife Service for killing jobs, particularly in California, though he did not cite specific examples.

Gingrich devoted much of his speech to his promise to bring down the price of gas, saying that he would accelerate domestic oil exploration. "We know how to get gasoline prices back down. Produce more gas," he said. "Join us in a campaign to drill here, drill now, pay less and let's get back to $2 a gallon gasoline with Gingrich, not $5 a gallon gasoline with Obama."

One questioner wanted to know what the candidate was going to do for his wife, Callista, on Valentine's Day. Gingrich said they would have a private dinner, hopefully exchange gifts and "reconnect a little bit," which drew whoops from the crowd and led Gingrich to say: "No more details."