Romney wins big in Florida, routing Gingrich

DAVID ESPO

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Rom­ney routed Newt Gin­grich in the Florida pri­mary Tues­day night, rebound­ing smartly from an ear­lier defeat and tak­ing a major step toward the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Despite the one-sided set­back, the for­mer House speaker vowed to press on.

Rom­ney, talk­ing unity like a nom­i­nee, said he was ready “to lead this party and our nation” — and turn Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama out of office. In remarks to cheer­ing sup­port­ers, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor unleashed a strong attack on Obama and said the com­pet­i­tive fight for the GOP nom­i­na­tion “does not divide us, it pre­pares us” for the fall.

“Mr. Pres­i­dent, you were elected to lead, you chose to fol­low, and now it’s time to get out of the way, he declared.

Returns from 79 per­cent of Florida’s precincts showed Rom­ney with 47 per­cent of the vote, to 32 per­cent for Gingrich.

For­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen. Rick San­to­rum had 13 per­cent, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul 7 per­cent. Nei­ther mounted a sub­stan­tial effort in the state.

The winner-take-all pri­mary was worth 50 Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion del­e­gates, by far the most of any pri­mary state so far.

But the big­ger prize was pre­cious polit­i­cal momen­tum in the race to pick an oppo­nent for Obama in a nation strug­gling to recover from the deep­est reces­sion in decades.

That belonged to Rom­ney when he cap­tured the New Hamp­shire pri­mary three weeks ago, then swung stun­ningly to Gin­grich when he coun­tered with a South Car­olina upset 11 days later.

Now it was back with the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, after a 10-day come­back that marked a change to more aggres­sive tac­tics, cou­pled with an effi­cient use of an over­whelm­ing finan­cial advan­tage to bat­ter Gin­grich in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials over a 10-day campaign.

For the first time in the cam­paign, exit polls showed a gen­der gap in Romney’s favor. He ran far bet­ter among women than Gin­grich, win­ning just over half of their votes, to three in 10 for his rival.

Only about half of the women vot­ers said they had a favor­able view of the thrice-married Gin­grich as a per­son, while about eight in 10 had a pos­i­tive opin­ion of Romney.

As in Iowa, New Hamp­shire and South Car­olina, about half of Florida pri­mary vot­ers said the most impor­tant fac­tor for them was back­ing a can­di­date who can defeat Obama in Novem­ber, accord­ing to early exit poll results con­ducted for The Asso­ci­ated Press and the tele­vi­sion networks.

Not sur­pris­ingly, in a state with an unem­ploy­ment rate hov­er­ing around 10 per­cent, about two-thirds of vot­ers said the econ­omy was their top issue. More than eight in 10 said they were falling behind or just keep­ing up. And half said that home fore­clo­sures have been a major prob­lem in their communities.

Gin­grich, from neigh­bor­ing Geor­gia, swept into Florida from South Car­olina, only to run head­long into a dif­fer­ent Rom­ney from the one he had left in his wake in South Carolina.

Rom­ney, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, shed his reluc­tance to attack Gin­grich, the for­mer House speaker, unleash­ing hard-hitting ads on tele­vi­sion, sharp­en­ing his per­for­mance in a pair of debates and deploy­ing sur­ro­gates to the edges of Gingrich’s own cam­paign appear­ances, all in hopes of unnerv­ing him.

Restore our Future, an out­side group sup­port­ing Rom­ney, accounted for about $8.8 mil­lion in the ad wars, and the can­di­date and the “super PAC” com­bined out­spent Gin­grich and Win­ning The Future, the orga­ni­za­tion back­ing him, by about $15.5 mil­lion to $3.3 mil­lion, an advan­tage of nearly 5–1.

Gin­grich responded by assail­ing Rom­ney as a man inca­pable of telling the truth and vowed to remain in the race until the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion next sum­mer. He won the endorse­ment of cam­paign dropout Her­man Cain and increas­ingly sought the sup­port of evan­gel­i­cals and tea party advo­cates, a for­mer House speaker run­ning as the anti-establishment insur­gent of the party he once helped lead.

Bom­barded by harsh tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, some Florid­i­ans said they had soured on both candidates.

“The dirty ads really turned me off on Mitt Rom­ney,” said Dorothy Ander­son, of Pinel­las Park, adding she was vot­ing for Gin­grich. She said of Rom­ney, “In fact if he gets the nom­i­na­tion, I prob­a­bly won’t vote for him.”

At the same polling place, Rom­ney sup­porter Cur­tis Dempsey expressed sim­i­lar feel­ings but about Gin­grich. “The only thing Newt Gin­grich has to offer is a big mouth,” he said.

Vot­ers fre­quently say they are offended or appalled by neg­a­tive ads. But polls show con­sis­tently that the com­mer­cials are able to sway the opin­ions of large num­bers of vot­ers, and they are a sta­ple of nearly all campaigns.

San­to­rum had no money for tele­vi­sion ads to back up his strong debate per­for­mances. He left the state at one point, say­ing he was going home to Penn­syl­va­nia to pre­pare his income tax returns. But he stayed longer than antic­i­pated, because of the hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of his 3-year-old daugh­ter with pneu­mo­nia. The girl has a rare genetic dis­or­der, Tri­somy 18.

San­to­rum was already in Nevada Tues­day night, cam­paign­ing for the state’s cau­cuses on Sat­ur­day. “Newt Gin­grich had his chance. He had his shot,” he said. Now Repub­li­cans are “look­ing for a dif­fer­ent conservative.”

San­to­rum and Paul both also cam­paigned in Col­orado on Tues­day as Florida Repub­li­cans were vot­ing. The state has cau­cuses on Feb 7, the same day as Minnesota.

Even before that come cau­cuses in Nevada, a state that Rom­ney won when he sought the nom­i­na­tion in 2008 and is favored to cap­ture again.

By con­trast, both Rom­ney and Gin­grich cam­paigned across Florida on pri­mary day as the polls opened.

Exud­ing con­fi­dence, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor said — even though the fig­ures said oth­er­wise — that he had been out­spent in South Carolina.

“I needed to make sure that instead of being out­gunned in terms of attacks, that I responded aggres­sively, and hope­fully that will have served me well here,” he told reporters.

Gin­grich, com­bat­ive as usual, said the race for the nom­i­na­tion won’t be decided until sum­mer, “unless Rom­ney drops out.”

More than 600,000 Florid­i­ans voted before the polls opened, either by absen­tee or early bal­lot, exceed­ing the fig­ure from four years ago, and rais­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of a record turnout. Vote totals in the three con­tests to date — Iowa, New Hamp­shire and South Car­olina — have all been records.

Posted by AP News on Jan 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.