Minnesota Rep. and former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is endorsing U.S. Rep. Connie Mack in Florida’s Republican Senate primary, likening Mack to Senate tea party faves Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.

Bachmann is the second former GOP candidate with a tea party following to weigh in on the Senate race recently. Herman Cain came out for George LeMieux over the weekend.

Says Bachmann: “Connie has been a steadfast fighter for freedom, less government and a fiscal hawk together with me in the United States Congress. For every good proposal passed out of the House, the liberal Senate under Harry Reid and Bill Nelson have stopped it, including Connie’s recent proposal to build the Keystone XL Pipeline without Presidential approval. Senators like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul need other like-minded conservatives in the Senate to stop the liberals from tearing down our nation. America needs Connie Mack in the U.S. Senate.”

Former appointed Sen. George LeMieux, whose reputation as former Gov. Charlie Crist‘s “maestro” once made him the embodiment of the Florida GOP establishment, has been endorsed by Herman Cain, who hailed LeMieux’s anti-establishment credentials at a Hernando County GOP dinner over the weekend.

“Tonight was the first time I ever heard Sen. LeMieux. And I’m sitting there thinking to myself: He’s saying everything I would say,” businessman and former GOP presidential candidate Cain said.

“This is the type of person that we need in Washington, D.C. — people who are not afraid to challenge the establishment,” said Cain, who said he didn’t tell LeMieux or his own staff in advance before making the endorsement.

LeMieux and Rep. Connie Mack are the leading Republican contenders for the nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

Former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO and former National Restaurant Association Chairman Craig Miller is leaving the crowded Republican U.S. Senate race and says he’ll run instead for a new coastal congressional district that’s expected to include parts of Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns and Putnam counties.

Miller recently snagged the endorsement of fellow restaurateur Herman Cain for the Senate race.

Miller leaves without endorsing any of the other GOP Senate hopefuls — former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack of Cape Coral, former appointed Sen. George LeMieux and businessman Mike McCalister.

“There are several very qualified candidates in the U.S. Senate race to represent our party, some with more name recognition and resources than our campaign. Therefore, I have chosen to shift my focus to serving the people of the new Coastal District,” Miller said in a statement released this morning.

“Having grown up on the Intracoastal Waterway and having spent a lifetime working in the Hospitality and Tourism industry, including opening and operating businesses in Volusia and St. John Counties, this new District offers me a unique opportunity to serve.”

NAPLES — A large crowd is here waiting to see Mitt Romney, who has opened up a double-digit lead over Newt Gingrich in three new polls as Tuesday’s Florida Republican presidential primary approaches.

Here’s the latest polling roundup from RealClearPolitics.

Gingrich, who got Herman Cain‘s endorsement Saturday night in West Palm Beach, vowed on ABC News this morning to press his fight for the nomination all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa this summer.

Romney has a campaign stop here around noon, then heads to Hialeah, Pompano Beach and Jacksonville today.

Gingrich attended church in Lutz near Tampa this morning, then heads to The Villages and Jacksonville.

Rick Santorum called off morning appearances in Florida today because his 3-year-old daughter was hospitalized in Pennsylvania. But he may still make it to events later today in Sarasota and PUnta Gorda.

Former restaurant exec-turned-candidate Herman Cain will be in Orlando on Thursday with another restaurateur-candidate, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful and former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO Craig Miller.

The pair will be promoting Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan and Cain will make what the Miller campaign bills as a “major announcement.”

Cain, whose outsider presidential candidacy soared to the top of GOP polls before crashing amid allegations of crude sexual advances and infidelity that he vehemently denied, has also said he’s going to be making an “unconventional endorsement” in the presidential race next week.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will replace Herman Cain as the keynote speaker at the Palm Beach County Republican Party’s Jan. 28 Lincoln Day dinner — three days before Florida’s high-stakes presidential primary.

The local GOP thought it scored a major coup in October when it booked the surging Cain for the $195-a-plate event. Cain suspended his campaign a couple weeks ago.

Gingrich is the current GOP frontrunner in Florida and most national polls — but so was Rudy Giuliani in December 2007.

It’ll be the second year in a row that Gingrich has been the local party’s Lincoln Day speaker. He headlined the Feb. 24 GOP dinner when he was on the verge of entering the race.

Gingrich is also slated to appear at a brunch for the Martin County GOP earlier in the day on Jan. 28.

Even before Herman Cain “suspended” his presidential candidacy, the Palm Beach County Republican Party was growing uneasy about having Cain as keynote speaker for the party’s Jan. 28 Lincoln Day fundraising dinner.

Now county Republican Chairman Sid Dinerstein is scrambling to line up another big-name speaker for the dinner, which takes place three days before Florida’s presidential primary.

When the local GOP landed Cain as keynoter in October, a party e-mail blared “CAIN TRAIN STOPS IN PALM BEACH COUNTY FOR LINCOLN DAY.” But a county GOP e-mail last Thursday merely listed Cain as one of seven “invited keynote speakers” for the dinner.

“It had become clear to us before he officially dropped out that he had lost the viability that we need to have a successful Lincoln Day,” Dinerstein said. “We’ve been working on Plans B, C, D and E for more than a week.”

Plan B is to book another presidential candidate, said Dinerstein, who wouldn’t discuss plans further down the alphabet.

“We still want to take advantage of the fact that it’s three days before the primary,” Dinerstein said.

He said about 140 tickets have sold so far for the dinner at the Kravis Center. The GOP hopes to draw more than 700; it got about 600 for the February 2011 dinner with Newt Gingrich.

Embattled GOP presidential contender Herman Cain‘s Sunshine State supporters are in a wait-and-see mode while the campaign decides on its next move in the wake of allegations of a decade-long extramarital affair, Cain’s Florida campaign co-chairman Rep. Scott Plakon said Tuesday.

Cain told advisors and supporters including Plakon this morning that he is “reassessing” whether to remain in the race.

But Plakon said that, if what Cain says is true and he did not have a 13-year affair with Ginger White, Cain should stay in. And if that’s the case, he’s got Plakon’s support.

“If it turns out that all he had was 61 text messages, that seems like a pretty lousy reason o drive someone out of the presidential race…To say he should get out because of that I can speak for myself. I just don’t roll that way,” Plakon, R-Longwood, said.

And, Plakon said, Cain’s Florida supporters are on hold but haven’t bailed after the latest round of accusations.

“We haven’t heard anybody calling to say, ‘I’m out of here.’ He’s so well-liked people are willing to see what the reassessment looks like over the next few days,” Plakon said.

Plakon, who said he was on the conference call with Cain’s national advisors Tuesday morning, said the accusations alone should not force Cain to step aside.

“He says he didn’t do these things. And if that is true, to be forced out of this race over allegations that aren’t true would be truly unfortunate and I think would be bad for our country. We have a long tradition in the country. You should be presumed innocent until you’re found guilty,” he said. “If it turns out that all he had was 61 text messages, that seems like a pretty lousy reason o drive someone out of the presidential race…To say he should get out because of that I can speak for myself. I just don’t roll that way.”

If the allegations are true, however, Cain should drop out, Plakon said.

“If he did have a 13-year affair, then he should get out. But I take him at his word. And he said he didn’t do it. So unless proof comes forward, I don’t think these things should chase a presidential candidate in the top tier out of the race,” he said.

The latest set of accusations are sure to hamper Cain, once a favorite among GOP voters but whose star plummeted in the wake of the first round of accusations of sexual harassment earlier this month.

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Sexual harassment accusations have consumed much of Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain‘s time and sapped some of his momentum over the past two weeks.

And as Cain prepares for a campaign swing through South Florida on Wednesday, the businessman also faces new questions about his grasp of foreign policy issues. The above clip of Cain’s response to a question about Libya is from an interview with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board.

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain, whose Wednesday schedule already includes a 5 p.m. rally at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach and a $999-and-up fundraiser in Palm Beach afterward, has added two other South Florida stops to his schedule that day.

Cain plans an 11:45 a.m. visit on Wednesday to Versailles Restaurant on Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana, where countless Republican candidates have pressed the flesh with Cuban-American voters and lobbed verbal grenades at Fidel Castro.

Cain has also scheduled a 1:45 p.m. Wednesday stop at the Wings Plus restaurant at 9880 West Sample Road in Coral Springs.

The Miami and Coral Springs events and the rally in West Palm Beach are free and open to the public. The West Palm Beach event was originally planned as a $50-a-head fundraiser before plans changed Friday.

Other outlets are reporting Cain appearances in Jacksonville on Friday and Sarasota on Nov. 27.

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain‘s Wednesday fundraiser at the Palm Beach County Convention Center will now be a free rally instead of a $50-a-head event, his campaign announced today.

That’s not a sign that the Cain campaign was having trouble selling tickets to the 5 p.m. event, Cain senior adviser Arlene DiBenigno said.

“We’ve got two finance events after that are doing really well,” DiBenigno said. One is a $999-and-up event at the home of Palm Beach Town Councilman David Rosow.

DiBenigno said the campaign will still accept contributions at the convention center event, but wanted to give Cain’s grass-roots supporters an opportunity to see him for free.

Florida voters have unfavorable views of both the conservative tea party movement and left-leaning Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

And while Floridians are nearly evenly split when asked if they view President Obama favorably or unfavorably (47 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable), they are decidedly negative in evaluating his job performance and reelection worthiness.

Only 41 percent of Floridians approve of the way Obama is handling his job, with 52 percent disapproving. And by a 51-to-43 percent margin, Florida voters say Obama does not deserve to be reelected next year.

Gov. Rick Scott‘s gets a 36 percent job-approval rating and a 50 percent disapproval. He’s not on the ballot until 2014.

Asked about the tea party movement, 34 percent of Floridians said they have a favorable view and 40 percent said they have an unfavorable view — a 6-point negative spread.

The Occupy movement was viewed favorably by 30 percent and unfavorably by 39 percent — a 9-point negative spread.

The Republican and Democratic parties and GOP presidential contenders Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are also under water in their favorability ratings. Herman Cain‘s score is barely positive, with 36 percent of Floridians saying they view him favorably and 34 unfavorably.

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Quinnipiac University’s latest round of swing-state polling shows a virtual tie in Florida between President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, with the former Massachusetts governor holding a 45-to-42 percent lead that’s within the poll’s 2.9 percent margin of error.

Obama and Romney are virtually tied in Ohio and Pennsylvania as well

Among Republicans, Herman Cain leads the field with 27 percent to Romney’s 21 percent and Newt Gingrich‘s 17 percent. That sample has a 4.3 percent margin of error.

The poll was conducted Oct. 31-Nov. 7 — after accusations of sexual harassment surfaced against Cain.

In a head-to-head matchup with Obama, the president edges Cain by a 45-to-41 percent margin. Obama leads Gingrich 45-to-42 and tops Rick Perry 46-to-40.

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain‘s evolving crisis-management strategy — first ignoring requests to address anonymous sexual harassment accusations, then not completely denying they existed, then flatly denying bad behavior, then amending his denial with remembered details of settlements, then wishfully declaring “end of story” — is entering a new phase.

After Sharon Bialek stepped forward Monday with a detailed claim that Cain made a crude sexual advance in 1997, Cain told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel that “There’s not an ounce of truth in all these accusations.”

And Cain’s campaign signaled an aggressive pushback late Monday, scheduling a press conference later today in Phoenix to address the allegations and firing some preemptive shots at Bialek’s credibility.

“After attacking Herman Cain through anonymous accusers for a week, his opponents have now convinced a woman with a long history of severe financial difficulties, including personal bankruptcy, to falsely accuse the Republican frontrunner of events occurring over a decade ago for which there is no record, nor even a complaint filed,” Cain’s campaign said in an e-mail.

Some details of Bialek’s past have been outlined by The Chicago Tribune.

For a roundup of initial Florida reaction to Bialek’s accusations, click here.

Whoever wins the 2012 Republican presidential nomination can carry Florida if he adds Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate, according to a new poll by Suffolk University in Massachusetts.

The poll of 800 Florida voters has a 3.5 percent margin for error and was conducted Oct. 26-30 — after news stories detailed that Rubio’s Cuban-born parents came to the U.S. before Fidel Castro‘s 1959 takeover rather than afterward, as Rubio’s official Senate biography stated.

In a Rubio-free scenario, the poll found Mitt Romney as the strongest GOP nominee against President Obama in Florida. Obama and Romney tied at 42 percent in a hypothetical matchup. Obama beat Herman Cain by a 42-to-39 percent margin and Rick Perry by a 46-to-34 percent margin.

When respondents were asked to choose between an Obama-Joe Biden ticket and a nameless Republican nominee with Rubio as running mate, the GOP tandem won by a 46-to-41 percent margin.

But an Obama-Hillary Clinton ticket would beat a nameless Republican-Rubio ticket by a 46-to-43 percent margin in Florida, the poll says. And Obama and Clinton would win 50-to-41 against a hypothetical GOP ticket without Rubio.

Says Suffolk’s David Paleologos: “In Florida, Marco Rubio is Superman, but Hillary Clinton is the Kryptonite.”

The poll found the GOP presidential primary race virtually tied, with Romney leading Cain by a 25-to-24 percent margin

News that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was the target of sexual harassment complaints in the 1990s has not slowed ticket sales to a pair of Nov. 16 Cain fundraisers in Palm Beach County, local consultant Teresa Dailey says.

Cain says he was falsely accused while heading the National Restaurant Association. Two women received settlements in “the five-figure range,” Politico.com reported.

Cain is to appear at a $50-a-head event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach on Nov. 16, then head to Palm Beach for a $999 event at the home of David Rosow, the president of the town council and a pal of Rush Limbaugh.

Since news of the complaints broke Sunday night, Dailey said, “I have seen an effect and it’s very positive.” She said 50 to 100 tickets have sold this week. Dailey said she’s expecting 800 to 1,000 people for the convention center event and 75 to 100 at Rosow’s house.

Conservative Palm Beach celebrities Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are among those leading a furious pushback from the right against an anonymously sourced Politico.com report that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment in the 1990s.

And part-time Palm Beacher Donald Trump has weighed in as well, speculating that “perhaps he settled just because he didn’t want to go through the legal fees or he didn’t want to spend a lot of money.”

Cain today adamantly denied sexually harassing anyone, saying he was the target of “false accusations” in the 1990 when he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. He said he had no knowledge of any settlement stemming from the charges. Politico said two women, whose identities were not revealed, received settlements “in the five-figure range.”

Limbaugh today blasted the “unconscionable, racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black” and said the media would not pursue a similar story against President Obama.

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Facing the first big test of his presidential candidacy, Herman Cain told Fox News this morning that he has never sexually harassed anyone but said he was “falsely accused” while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

Politico.com reported late Sunday that two women who worked for the association “complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable.” Both women, who are not named in the story, left their jobs with “separation packages that were in the five-figure range,” Politico reported.

“I have never sexually harassed anyone,” Cain said on Fox News this morning. “Let’s say that. Secondly, I’ve never sexually harassed anyone and, yes, I was falsely accused when I was at the National Restaurant Association. And I say falsely because it turned out, after the investigation, to be baseless…..It is totally baseless and totally false. Never have I committed any sort of sexual harassment.”

Asked if he had ever had to settle a claim because of an accusation of sexual harassment, Cain said:

“If the Restaurant Association did a settlement I am not even — I wasn’t even aware of it and I hope it wasn’t for much, because nothing happened. So if there was a settlement it was handled by some of the other officers that worked for me at the Association.”

Cain can expect more questions when he appears at the National Press Club in Washington early this afternoon.

Mitt Romney is ahead in Florida and three other early states on the Republican presidential selection calendar, according to polls released today by CNN.

Romney has a 30-to-18 percent lead over Herman Cain in Florida, according to the Oct. 20-25 poll of 401 registered Republicans, which has a 5 percent margin of error. Former frontrunner Rick Perry and former House speaker Newt Gingrich are tied for third with 9 percent.

The polls, conducted for CNN and Time by the firm ORC, show Romney with a commanding 40-to-13 percent lead over Cain in New Hampshire. Ron Paul is third in the Granite State with 12 percent.

In Iowa and South Carolina, Romney holds narrow leads within the 5 percent margin of error for each state. He’s up 24-to-21 percent over Cain in Iowa and 25-to-23 percent over Cain in South Carolina.

Former Jeb Bush operatives Kathleen Shanahan and Arlene DiBenigno and veteran Tampa GOP media consultant Adam Goodman will be part of Herman Cain’s long-awaited campaign team in Florida.

An official announcement is expected later today, but details were reported this morning by The St. Petersburg Times and confirmed to PostOnPolitics by state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, an early Cain endorser who’ll be one of four state co-chairs for Cain.

The other co-chairs will be Shanahan, former St. Petersburg mayor Rick Baker and former state Sen. Carey Baker, R-Eustis.

Cain, whose Sept. 24 victory in a Republican Party of Florida straw poll propelled him into the top tier of GOP presidential candidates, has so far been relying on a network of volunteers in the crucial Sunshine State. But Plakon last week promised that the campaign would be adding “serious, seasoned people who have run significant campaigns.”

Others on Cain’s Florida team include Hillsborough County GOP Chairwoman Deborah Cox-Roush and Orlando activist “Typhoon Lou” Marin, who’s been heading the volunteer Florida4Cain organization.