The four remaining candidates contesting the GOP presidential nomination go to the polls in Florida, Tuesday, Jan. 31 and with a winner-takes-all outcome in this primary, the stakes are high.
Unlike states that have a proportional system of allocating delegates in the presidential primaries, Florida has a winner-takes-all rule, the winning candidate standing to gain all 50 of Florida’s delegates.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, determined to leave behind his 28 percent loss to Newt Gingrich’s 40 percent win in South Carolina, has upped the ante in the more moderately conservative Southern state.
Romney came out aggressively against Gingrich in televised national debates last week and blitzed the airwaves in Florida with attack ads on Gingrich’s past.
He has also maintained a pointed attack on the former House speaker as he campaigns around Florida, accusing Gingrich of being unreliable and unethical, particularly regarding funds the former House speaker received from Freddie Mac while that company was embroiled in the housing foreclosure crisis.
“The idea that someone running for president at the time that was going on … that’s the real reason why Speaker Gingrich has had such a hard time,” Romney said. “If (people) want to see change in Washington, you can’t just select the same people to take different chairs.”
Romney strategy working
By all accounts the strategy has paid off. Romney is leading Gingrich by 14 points, 43 percent to Gingrich’s 29 percent, among likely GOP primary voters according to a Quinnipiac University poll of Florida Republican voters released Monday Jan 30.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania both had 11 percent in the Quinnipiac poll with 24 percent indicating they could change their minds.
Republican, Joan Owens, 69, a retired teacher and a resident in Republican stronghold Naples, Fla., says she had supported Newt Gingrich earlier, describing him then as “well spoken” and caring, noting that “Republicans get labeled as uncaring.”
But come Tuesday Owens said she and most of the Republicans she knows in Naples, will be voting for Romney.
“I think it’s important we get a Republican in the White House,” she said. “Gingrich is coming on strong but his morality bothers me.”
Owens said she was not happy about the manner of Gingrich’s departure as House speaker in the late ‘90s saying, “He left on less than good terms.”
“Didn’t he pay $300,000 in fines?” she asked.
She was referring to the $300,000 Gingrich agreed to pay the House as reimbursement for the cost of an ethics investigation into whether he used tax-exempt funds to promote Republican causes.
While he was eventually found not guilty of those charges, he was reprimanded by the House for giving what was considered misleading information.
“Romney just doesn’t have anything bad in his background,” said Owens, adding, “We need to get somebody who can get us back on track.”
Gingrich fighting back
Although somewhat diminished after his big win in South Carolina, Gingrich is maintaining the fight in Florida and beyond, gaining former GOP candidate Herman Cain’s endorsement last weekend and appearing with Michael Reagan, the son of the late President Ronald Reagan, in Tampa on the last day of campaigning.
Gingrich has accused Romney of being both a liar and “some liberal from Massachusetts.”
He complained about the debates saying the audience should not have been restrained in applauding, and commented on the extent of Romney’s massive advertising blitz against him telling supporters in Jacksonville Monday, “Frankly if all that stuff were true I wouldn’t vote for myself.”
Gingrich still has the support of many conservative voters, too. In a straw poll conducted last Sunday by the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, Gingrich gained 35 percent of the vote of 600 Tea party supporters in Florida, with Romney trailing at 18 percent.
Dave Ray, a graduate student from Florida who is studying at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., says he is supporting the former House speaker.
“I believe Newt is the best person to go up against Obama,” Ray told The Epoch Times, adding that Gingrich was the “more imaginative of the candidates” and the best “true conservative” for the Republican presidential nominee.
Ray said he had already posted his absentee vote to that effect.
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