WASHINGTON – Vast, diverse and a crucial general election prize, Florida has little in common with its three predecessors in the Republican presidential primary contest.
The state’s Jan. 31 primary is favorable terrain for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's victory in South Carolina could buoy him in Georgia’s southern neighbor.
Success in Florida will depend a lot more on media than the face-to-face campaigning that in many ways defines the early states.
“You can’t run the type of retail politics that you did in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” said Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus specializing in politics at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg.
“To be successful in Florida you need TV, and to put on TV ads in 10 major media markets means you need deep pockets.”
That benefits Romney, by far the best funded and most well-organized candidate. In Florida he has the support of much of the political establishment, and his campaign and a friendly Super PAC already have released a torrent of advertising there.
Gingrich’s Florida campaign has been late coming together, but is gaining steam. Gingrich has 14 paid staffers and seven campaign offices in Florida, and he has campaign chairman in all of the Sunshine State’s counties, a spokesman said. The number of campaign volunteers there doubled since last Monday’s debate.
Gingrich is due to arrive in Florida Monday.
“In Florida, my case is going to be very simple,” the former Georgia congressman said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “You have a clear establishment candidate in Mitt Romney. Look where his money comes from. Look at his background. Look what he did in Massachusetts… I think Floridians would like somebody who speaks for them to Washington, not somebody who speaks for the establishment to them.”
Momentum can be especially powerful in Florida, where voters do not spend as much time vetting the candidates.
“To some extent Florida has been a follower rather than a leader in its presidential primary voting patterns,” Paulson said. “It looks at who wins, who’s likely to be the nominee and it will support that candidate.”
Two more prime-time debates this week -- Monday in Tampa on NBC and Thursday in Jacksonville on CNN -- will give further opportunity for Gingrich to nab the spotlight. His strong debate performances in South Carolina helped swing the race in his favor in the closing days.
Gingrich has campaigned little in Florida, making one visit in January during which he opened a campaign office in Orlando. His campaign is airing at least one Spanish-language radio ad in the Miami area.
Romney has already displayed his financial advantage, as the Restore Our Future Super PAC – stocked with former Romney aides – has flooded Florida with more than $4 million worth of television ads and more than $800,000 worth of direct mail, most of it attacking Gingrich.
Winning Our Future, a Super PAC run by former Gingrich aides, spent big in South Carolina, aided by a reported $5 million gift from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Still, the pro-Gingrich effort will need much more ammunition to compete in expensive Florida media markets.
Candidates’ money and time will likely be concentrated primarily in the Interstate 4 corridor that leads from Orlando to Tampa and St. Petersburg on the state’s western coast.
Susan McManus, political science professor at the University of South Florida, said 45 percent of the state’s registered Republicans live in the Tampa and Orlando media markets. Those areas and Latino-heavy South Florida will be prime targets, she said.
On Sunday Romney held a rally in Ormond Beach, on the state’s eastern coast, while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum campaigned in South Florida’s Coral Springs.
Gingrich’s Georgia roots also could help him in northern Florida, which is packed with social conservative voters who could be hostile to Romney. Santorum likely will compete well there, too.
Romney can draw from fiscal conservatives in the West Palm Beach area, and he had his strongest showing in 2008 in the Jacksonville area in the state’s northeast corner.
“If you were going to try to find a microcosm of the Republican Party nationally in a single state, I don’t know that you’d find a better state than Florida,” said Tallahassee Republican strategist J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich. “We’ve got some Hispanic going on, middle class, upper class, head-banging conservatives, disdainful elites.”
In 2008 the state voted for eventual nominee John McCain, with Romney in second place.
“He has worked Florida assiduously ever since,” Stipanovich said last week.
“He’s got a good team down here, good organization, good fundraising. … If Gingrich were to win South Carolina that would result in a lot of media and make up for that resource deficit to some degree, but I think that Romney wins in a winner-take-all state.”
Romney has amassed high-powered endorsements such as South Florida U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, who appeared in a Spanish-language television advertisement supporting him.
McManus said the state’s most powerful endorser would be former Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush who has been discussed for a run but declined. Jeb Bush has not picked a candidate, but many of his former advisers are working for Romney, which many in the state’s GOP establishment view as tacit support from Bush, McManus said.
Another factor in Romney’s favor is the fact that President Barack Obama won the state in the 2008 general election.
“Something you can’t underestimate about Florida Republicans is the way they desperately want to turn Florida red again; it really was a blow to them when they lost the state in ’08,” McManus said. “I think it’s going to be very much the dominant factor here -- electability over ideological purity.”
Florida is a quadrennial battleground, and the state has an additional spotlight this time around as Tampa will host the Republican Convention in September. But the state moved up its primary in violation of party wishes, and as a result it will send just 50 delegates to the convention – half the number Florida would have held if it stayed in line.
Stipanovich brushed off the idea that the state would lose any clout, noting that the parties’ nominations are wrapped up long before the convention these days.
“Florida’s impact will come from the news stories that follow the [primary] election,” he said.
Jeremy Redmon and Aaron Gould Sheinin contributed from South Carolina.
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