DORAL – A day after most pundits agreed Mitt Romney had bested Newt Gingrich in Thursday night’s nationally-televised debate, he received enthusiastic applause and several standing ovations while speaking to about 500 leaders at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference.
Gingrich? Not so much.
The two GOP presidential candidates said many of the same things to the group formed by former Gov. Jeb Bush. For instance, both want to open up trade with Latin America, both want to free Cuban from the clutches of Fidel Castro, both said they love immigrants but hate illegal immigration and both want the Dream Act to require American-raised children of immigrants to serve in the military before they can achieve citizenship and what is now an elusive college education.
However, Gingrich’s speech fell flat. Some suggested he was tired after flying from Jacksonville to Miami immediately after the debate to make a morning appearance before the Latin Builders Association.
John Papavaritis, a Miami real estate agent, agreed that the two candidates agreed on many issues. For instance, both said something has to be done to streamline the nation’s bureaucratic process of obtaining visas, which prevents people from visiting and working here.
“Gingrich said the same thing,” Papavaritis admitted. “With Mitt, there was less rhetoric.”

DORAL – Before Feliciano Ramirez heard Mitt Romney speak today, he was all-but certain he was going to vote for Newt Gingrich.

“He can really debate Obama on all of the issues because he’s a Washington insider,” Ramirez said, echoing the sentiments of many recent converts to the Gingrich camp.

However, after hearing the two candidates deliver back-to-back speeches at the Hispanic Leadership Network, Ramirez’s vote in Tuesday’s GOP primary wasn’t so certain.

“I’m going to have to pray on it,” he said with a laugh after the Massachusetts governor gave a rousing speech to roughly 500 Latin American leaders.

And, he said, it wasn’t just Romney’s enthusiastic rhetoric or Gingrich’s more professorial speech. Ramirez said he was impressed with the candidate’s wife, Ann.

Romney was introduced to the crowd in Spanish by the couple’s youngest son, who spent several years in Chile. After a quick “Ola!” from one of their 16 grandkids, Ann Romney delivered what appeared to be a heartfelt, funny and down home assessment of the rigors of being a candidate’s wife and raising five children while her husband traveled on business and why she agreed, once again, to join him on the campaign trail.

“Four years ago, I was definite about one thing: I would never do it again,” she said of her husband’s failed 2008 campaign. “Mitt said, you say that after every pregnancy. All the women out there know what I’m talking about.”

When he broached the subject again, she said she was reluctant. Before she was going to endure another campaign, she asked him to answer one question: “Can you fix it?” When he answered yes, she was in.

“He has the ability to find the core of the problem and then figure out how to fix it,” said Ann Romney, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and is a breast cancer survivor.

Ramirez was impressed with her moxie. “His wife pulled it off,” he said.

Gingrich, who speaks what he calls “pidgin Spanish” but didn’t try it out on the Hispanic audience, was also accompanied by his wife, Callista. She didn’t speak, but stood by his side, smiling, clapping and nodding her support.

TAMPA — protesters outside today’s U.S. Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in Tampa, said House Bill 1355 is not about voter suppression, but about countering voter fraud.

ACLU and NAACP leaders today said the house bill, which (among other things) limits the amount of early voting days and makes it more difficult for third-parties to sign up voters, is a direct result of the 2008 elections that elected Barack Obama, the country’s first black president.

But the protesters said that’s not the case.

“The early vote was reduced from 14 days to eight. We’re trying to reduce voter fraud,” Mark Grosenbaugh of Tampa said.

Grosenbraugh said the NAACP’s argument that eliminating early voting on the Sunday before the election disenfranchises black voters who go to vote from church is irrelevant.

“Election Day is Election Day, I’m not sure if we need any early voting,”

Emma Runyin of Tampa said Sunday voting shouldn’t be allowed in the first place.

“I’m a Christian, I’ve been a Christian for 30 years, and one thing I would do no is vote on Sundays,” she said.

Runyin said if black voters really cared about voting, they wouldn’t have to be bused from church.

“These laws are the actually help those victimized by voter fraud,” she said.

TAMPA — In advance of this afternoon’s U.S. Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in Tampa, leaders from the NAACP, ACLU and other organizations held a morning press conference and blasted House Bill 1355, calling it “legislated voter suppression.”

The organization leaders said the house bill, which (among other things) limits the amount of early voting days and makes it more difficult for third-parties to sign up voters, is a direct result of the 2008 elections that elected Barack Obama, the country’s first black president.

Adora Obi Nweze of the NAACP said that when the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1965 was passed, the lawmakers never envisioned a black president would be elected. About 50 percent of black voters voted early in the 2008 election. Many were bused from their churches on the Sunday before the election, and the new law eliminated early voting on the Sunday before the election.

“You know all of this is about 2008,” Obi Nweze said. “The real truth of the matter is we had thousands of voters go to the polls of color and other minorities going to polls in 2008 and it turned this country on its heels. This country in its history or imagination never had any idea that we’d ever have an African American president. That was not the intent when (the 1965) law was signed.”

“So when they woke up screaming, the next morning (in 2008) they woke up with a plan and that plan was to ensure whatever they had to do, through the constitution or any other law they could find to make sure we no longer had that privilege,” said Obi Nweze, who called the new laws “Jim Crow again.”

Here are some other highlights:

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  After absorbing various jabs and effective counterpunches from Mitt Romney in a Jacksonville debate Thrursday night, Newt Gingrich spoke to an influential Hispanic business group in Miami Friday morning without once mentioning his chief rival, targeting President Barack Obama’s economic policies instead.

  Addressing about 200 people at an event sponsored by the Latin Builders Association, former House speaker Gingrich told the crowd that the renewal of their industry—construction– would depend on putting Americans back to work.

  “The number one job of a president is to get job creation going,” Gingrich said in a speech in the Hilton Hotel in downtown Miami. “In the four years I was speaker working with (President Bill) Clinton the American economy created 11 million new jobs. The solution to the housing crisis is getting people back to work.”

  Gingrich told the crowd, if elected, he would repeal Obama’s health care reform because of the onus it would put on business.

 “Small businesses are not investing because they don’t know what Obamacare will do to them,” he said and the comment was met by applause.

 He said he would also repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, which he believes is stopping banks from lending money for new housing

  And he said he would  reform unemployment compensation, obliging recipients to enroll in job training to learn new skills.

 “ We should never again pay people for 99 weeks for doing nothing,” he said, again drawing applause

  Gingrich was introduced by U.S. Rep David Rivera, R-Miami, the only one of the three Cuban-American Miami GOP members of Congress to endorse him. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz Balart both endorse Romney. Rivera praised Gingrich for his tenure as House speaker and his role in creating balanced budgets

 But in the crowd Friday morning, most of those who had seen the debate Thursday felt that Romney had gotten the best of Gingrich, in part by being more aggressive than his rival.

  Real estate broker Jorge Guerra Jr. said he thought Gingrich’s attempt to criticize Romney for having had money invested in government sponsored mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had backfired. Romney pointed out that Gingrich, who also owns mutual funds, had almost certainly also had money invested in those two entities through those funds.

“I thought that was really good comment by Romney,” said Guerra. “In general, I  thought Romney just showed better leadership.”

Contractor George Cuesta agreed. He criticized Gingrich for his proposal to build a colony on the moon . He said as much as contractors want building work, that wasn’t the answer.

“Gingrich has these big ideas, but they aren’t very practical,” he said. “Romney just seems more in tune with the country and he is also more electable.”

 

In what has quickly turned into a finger-pointing game of you’re the biggest liar, Mitt Romney responded to Newt Gingrich’s charge that he is “fundamentally dishonest” by insisting that the former House Speaker “can’t tell the truth.”

“Speaker Gingrich has demonstrated that can’t tell the truth about his unprecedented ethics reprimand, his resignation in disgrace at the hands of his own party, and his work as a highly paid Washington lobbyist for Freddie Mac,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said shortly after Gingrich blasted the former Massachusetts governor during a morning stop in Mount Dora.

Gingrich accused Romney, a multimillionaire businessman, of holding stock in both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and investing in . mortgage-backed securities with Goldman Sachs. The current owners of the mortgage debt are foreclosing on tens of thousands of Floridians.

Gingrich said he couldn’t believe his chief rival in the GOP presidential primary had the “gall” to criticize his $1.6 million consulting contract with Freddie Mac when Romney’s own business ties were so deep and led to so much misery for average citizens.

“There is something so grotesquely hypocritical about the Romney campaign that it is going to meltdown in the next several weeks as Americans learn more about him,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich has insisted he was nothing more than a consultant/historian for Freddie Mack. He has only released one year of a multi-year contract which didn’t illuminate exactly what he did.

Pointing out that Gingrich reported to Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, Romney has said Gingrich used the influence he gained as House Speaker to pad his own wallet at the expense of homeowners who later fell victim to Freddie Mac’s bad decisions.

 

MOUNT DORA – The crowd that greeted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in this quaint conservative town in Central Florida was big but not as wildly supportive as those that have turned out for him at other Florida stops.

And some of the roughly 1,500 who came to watch him speak said they aren’t convinced he’s the man to defeat President Obama in November.

Several said they were hoping that a surprise candidate – U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio or former Florida Gov.  Jeb Bush – might emerge as the nominee before the last delegate vote is counted at the Republican National Convention in August in Tampa.

“If Donald Trump got back in I’d give my vote to Donald Trump,” said Chris Ward, a Herman Cain supporter who said he plans to vote for the former executive of Godfather’s Pizza in Tuesday’s state presidential primary even though Cain has pulled out of the race.

Two attorneys who stood at the back of the crowd said they remain undecided.

“I’m looking for the best candidate to run against Obama,” said real estate attorney Archie Lowry. “I’m looking for a fiscal conservative candidate someone who understands you can’t spend more than you will receive.”

While both Gingrich and his chief rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have been hammering on that theme, Lowry and his friend, tax attorney Steve Pullman, said neither candidate has locked in their votes.

Pullman said he cringes each time Gingrich mentions “my wife Callista,” who appears with him at each campaign stop.  It just reminds Pullman of Gingrich’s infidelity to two former wives. “If he’ll lie to his wives and family he’ll damn well lie to me,” Pullman said.

Lowry said Gingrich’s past infidelities also bother him. While not a critical factor in his decision, he said, “it does go to character.”

“But, I understand redemption that he has admitted that what he did was wrong,” he said.

MOUNT DORA – GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich came out swinging against his chief rival for the Republican nomination calling Mitt Romney “fundamentally dishonest.”

Gingrich, who has endured months of criticism about a $1.6 million consulting contract with mortgage giant Freddie Mac, said the former Massachusetts governor has far more explaining to day about his business ties than he ever did. The former House Speaker said he worked as an historian for the company.

He accused Romney, a multimillionaire businessman, of holding stock in both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and investing mortgage-backed securities with Goldman Sachs, which ultimately led to foreclosure proceedings against tens of thousands of Floridians.

“There is something so grotesquely hypocritical about the Romney campaign that it is going to meltdown in the next several weeks as Americans learn more about him,” Gingrich said.

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GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich doesn’t care about criticism – even from some of his party’s stalwarts.

He shrugged when told his party’s 2008 presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain had blasted his leadership as House Speaker  and would be campaigning for rival Republican Mitt Romney throughout the state today.

“The entire establishment is in panic mode,” he said at a campaign stop late Wednesday.

The “establishment,” that not surprisingly includes the Arizona senator , U.S. Reps. Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and anyone else supporting Romney, is worried, he said.

“It’s disturbing people . . . that we would change Washington and they would have to live by new rules,” Gingrich said.

GOP Newt Gingrich doesn’t care about criticism – even from some of his party’s stalwarts.

He shrugged when told his party’s 2008 presidential candidate John McCain had blasted his leadership as House Speaker  and would be campaigning for rival Republican Mitt Romney throughout the state today.

“The entire establishment is in panic mode,” he said at a campaign stop late Wednesday.

The “establishment,” that not surprisingly seems to include the Arizona senator , U.S. Reps. Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and anyone else supporting Romney, is worried, he said.

“It’s disturbing people . . . that we would change Washington and they would have to live by new rules,” Gingrich said.

  Mitt Romney told a loud, enthusiastic crowd of Cuban-American supporters here Wednesday that if elected president he will oppose the Castro regime in Cuba “by overt ways and covert ways” and says he hopes he can help drive Fidel and Raul Castro from power.

He stopped short of calling for  military action against Cuba.

“I want to be president  at the time when we are able to say we brought freedom back to Cuba,” he said to loud applause at the historic Freedom Tower in downtown Miami. Romney was hosted there by the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC.

Romney was joined on stage by many Cuban-American political stalwarts –U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Miami), former Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and former U.S. senator Mel Martinez. U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Naples, was also on hand.

Romney attacked President Barack Obama who he said had made concessions to the Castro regime by increasing remittances that can be sent to Cuba and allowing more Americans to travel there, which he said was only helping prop up the Castro regime.

He said “ showing an olive branch” to Cuba was the wrong approach.

“By helping Castro (Obama) is not helping the people of Cuba, he is hurting them,” Romney said.

He said if elected he would strictly enforce the economic embargo against Cuba.

  Speaking to a Spanish language televison audience, Mitt Romney Wednesday  defended statements he made during a debate in Tampa Monday, when he said some persons in the country illegally might choose “self deportation,” that is they might choose to leave the country voluntarily.

 He told Univision network’s Jorge Ramos, in an interview in Miami that was to be aired Wednesday night,  that “self deportation” would be the result of stronger enforcement, including greater use of the E-verify system that allows employers to use federal software to identify persons who use false Social Security cards. He also said he would work to expand programs that allow foreigners living outside the U.S. to apply for visas to work legally in the U.S. hopefully instigating “self deporation.”

Ramos also pressed Romney on an issue of importance of some children of immigrant families in Florida: that  a child born in the U.S., but whose parents are in the country illegally, must  pay higher out-of-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities. Earlier in the day Gingrich told Ramos he would change that policy, but Romney rejected that idea, as he continued to stake out a harder stance on illegal immigration than his main foe.

 Romney said he was interested in helping other immigrants, including some who had been abused by people smugglers –coyotes- as they tried to enter the U.S. and also those persons who are going through the legal channels to be admitted into the U.S. legally.

 Ramos joked with Romney about the fact that some people have called him a Mexican, because Romney’s father was born in Mexico. Romney explained that his father had been born in an English speaking Mormon enclave in Mexico, but never spoke Spanish. Romney himself was born in the U.S.

 But Romney joked that it was fine with him if some people in heavily-Hispanic areas of Florida thought he was Mexican.

“I would love to be able to convince people of that, particularly in a Florida primary,” he said.

Mitt Romney slammed Newt Gingrich here today for labeling him “anti-immigrant,” accusing the former house speaker of pandering to a Hispanic audience.

Earlier in the day the Gingrich camp said it was removing the air an ad that labeled Romney “anti-immigrant” after top Miami area Hispanics, including U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, condemned the ad.

“I am not anti-immigrant, I am pro immigrant,” Romney told Spanish-language network Univision newsman Jorge Ramos in an interview taped Wednesday afternoon. “It is very tempting to come to an audience like this and pander to an audience like this,” Romney said of Gingrich.

 He called Gingrich’s attack on him ”sad.”

CORAL SPRINGS  – GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is getting used to large crowds greeting him at campaign stops. He has also become more adept at dealing with hecklers.

Ever the historian, he was quick to come up with a more than 100-year-old reference when a woman wouldn’t stop interrupting him so he could speak to the roughly 800 supporters who crammed into a parking lot outside Wings Plus on Sample Road to hear his stump speech.

“Abraham Lincoln said if you’re debating someone who will not agree that two plus two equals four you’ll never win,” he said. “I think you just met Abraham Lincoln’s debate nightmare.”

Then, just to make sure the woman got the message, he added: “Noise without knowledge is not a free society, it’s anarchy.”

The woman, who took more abuse from others at the rally than from Gingrich, was shouting accusations at him in connection with his $1.6 million contract with mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Rival Republican candidate Mitt Romney has accused Gingrich of lobbying for the firm that he says played a key role in the housing collapse. Gingrich insists he was paid as a historian and to offer advice.

MIAMI – With a full campaign schedule,  GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich hasn’t had time today to fully critique President Obama’s State of the Union address.

But during a Latin Policy Address at Florida International University and again at a packed event  in the parking lot of Wings Plus in Coral Springs, he called one of the proposals Obama floated Tuesday night “left-wing demagoguery” that could cripple the nation’s economy.

He blasted Obama’s plan to increase the capital gains tax from 15 to 30 percent  for those who make over $1 million a year.

“I’m not sure the president understood but if he actually meant what he said it would be a disaster of the first order,” Gingrich told the crowd of about 200 in an FIU school auditorium.

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MIAMI -  GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich came out swinging this morning when accused of being a hypocrite for blasting then President Bill Clinton for having an affair at the same time the former House Speaker was cheating on his own wife.

During a wide-ranging interview with Spanish-language television Univision, the twice-divorced Gingrich said he wasn’t criticizing Clinton’s sexual dalliance with White House intern Monica  Lewinsky. He said he was criticising Clinton’s response to it.

Clinton lied under oath, Gringrich said.

“I have never lied under oath. I have never committed perjury. I have never committed a felony,” he said. Clinton’s lapse was more serious because the former president is a lawyer and should have known better. Gingrich is a historian.

Further, he said, he has no regrets about lacing into CNN newscaster John King for beginning a debate last week in South Carolina by asking about his ex-wife’s claims that he asked her to embrace an “open marriage” when he was having an affair with his now wife, Callista.

With all the problems facing the country, the question about his personal life was simply inappropriate, he said. His ex-wife’s claims were false, he said.

As to his attack on the media in response to the question, he noted: The audience loved it.

NAPLES  – “He is a rock star,” an almost starry-eyed middle-aged Ans Nedoba said shortly after GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich squeezed through the crowd after his fourth and final campaign speech of the day.

And few who cheered wildly and jostled to get a picture of him would disagree.

A record-setting 6,000 people crammed into Cambier Park in historic Old Naples after sunset today to cheer and applaud the 68-year-old whose candidacy was once dismissed by party regulars. The stop capped a day in which 4,000 turned out in Sarasota and 500 greeted him at stops in both St. Petersburg and Fort Myers as his campaign bus traveled down the Republican-rich west coast.

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SARASOTA – Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is telling crowds it’s not enough to throw President Obama out of the White House.

“While he’s a start there’s a lot more about getting America on track than just Obama,” the former House Speaker said during campaign stops today.

He told crowds in St. Petersburg and Sarasota that for him to be successful when he becomes president in November, they have to throw out other Democratic lawmakers. Top on his list: Longtime Florida Sen. Bill Nelson.

“I need your help here to make sure Bill Nelson is replaced by a conservative,” he said.

SARASOTA – GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s crowds are getting bigger and his rhetoric is getting more pointed toward November.

A cheering crowd of roughly 3,000 showed up at a hangar at Sarasota-Brandenton International Airport this afternoon, by far the biggest and most enthusiastic since he hit the Sunshine State roughly 24 hours ago. Even the former House Speaker was impressed.

“When they told me how big the crowd was I was stunned,” he said.

As he did in an earlier campaign stop in St. Petersburg, he made few references to his top rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Until Gingrich’s campaign-changing win in South Carolina on Saturday, Romney was the odds-on favorite to win next week’s Florida primary. Instead, of criticizing Romney, Gingrich focused his considerable oratory skills and venom on President Obama.

The crowd ate it up.

When he talked about sending Obama back to Chicago in November, some in the crowd began chanting, “Kenya! Kenya!” a reference to Obama’s ancestral home, a place some Republicans still insist is the president’s place of birth.

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ST. PETERSBURG -  Wearing a Newt Gingrich mask and carrying a cardboard cut-out of Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Tampa man insisted he was supporting his lookalike although the lopsided wig on his daughter’s head and the sign she was carrying spoke of different intentions.

“I like to sit on the couch with Nancy Pelosi,” the man, who identified himself as Doc Riley said, pointing to his cardboard companion but clearly mimicking a line Mitt Romney used to blast Gingrich as an influence-peddler during Monday night’s debate. Further, the poster carried by his daughter, “Fannie and Freddie for Newt” is a sign that Romney’s continued harping on the $1.6 million Gingrich made as a consultant/historian to mortgage giant Freddie Mac is gaining some traction among voters.

The father-and-daughter dress up team (her blonde wig a try at impersonating Gingrich’s wife Callista) were among several protestors at this morning’s event at the Tick Tock Restaurant, that attracted scores of Gingrich supporters. There were sign-waving Occupy protestors. One man held a sign that simply said: “Vote Out Incumbents Let Someone New Steal Our Money.”

ST. PETERSBURG  – Looking at the hundreds who lined up inside and outside Tick Tock Restaurant this morning to catch a look at surging GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a longtime political consultant was struck by one thought: These aren’t your typical card-carrying Republican stalwarts.

“I’ve been doing party events in Tampa Bay for years and these are not your party regulars,” said Michelle Todd, political director for former Gov. Charlie Crist when he made a failed 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate as an independent.

The retirees, parents and grandparents with toddlers in strollers, people who stole time off work and young people who waited in the hot sun aren’t the ones who traditionally can be counted on to turn up for GOP events, Todd said.

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