DORAL, Fla. -- Newt Gingrich offered a brief "buenos dias y bienvenidos" to the crowd at Spanish-language television network Univision's presidential candidate forum Wednesday, but quickly admitted, "I speak pidgin Spanish."
In his native tongue, the former Georgian gladly ripped his primary foe for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, on immigration policy. Gingrich turned a question on the term “self-deportation” that Romney used in Monday night’s debate into a reference to the former Massachusetts governor’s newly released tax returns.
“I think you have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic $20 million income a year with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality,” Gingrich said.
Romney, for his part, accused Gingrich of pandering to a Hispanic audience and said Gingrich himself had supported self-deportation in the past. In Florida, 13 percent of registered voters are Hispanic.
Both Romney and Gingrich swung through Latino-heavy South Florida on Wednesday to court a voting bloc that will be crucial to Tuesday’s Florida primary. Univision’s Jorge Ramos grilled both men for a forum co-hosted by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Gingrich also gave a speech on Latin American foreign policy at Miami’s Florida International University, while Romney was feted by the US-Cuba Democracy PAC at Miami-Dade College.
Immigration policy was a major topic, and a policy distinction between the two top GOP contenders: Gingrich supports a path to legal status for illegal immigrants who have been in this country for 20-25 years, while Romney does not.
Gingrich’s stance has drawn some ire from conservative immigration hawks, but Ramos came from the opposite view, pointing out that Gingrich’s plan would exclude most of the estimated 11 million people here illegally. Of the rest, Gingrich said, “I’d urge them to get a guest worker permit.”
Gingrich, the former U.S. House speaker, pledged to reform the visa system -- including giving an H1 visa to every immigrant with an advanced degree in science or technology.
On the DREAM Act, a long-pending bill that would give a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who came here as children and go to college or serve in the military, Gingrich reiterated that he only supports the part that applies for the military. Romney in Monday's debate said he shared that view.
In his speech at Florida International, Gingrich said the Obama administration is far too focused on the Arab Spring revolutions.
“I don’t think it’s ever occurred to a single person in the White House to look south and propose a Cuban Spring,” he said, vowing to put pressure on Castro regime in the same way the U.S. and its allies hastened the fall of the Soviet Union.
Romney, who has significant support from the Cuban-American political establishment in Miami, railed against the regime in a speech before several hundred Cuban-American democracy activists.
“It is time for us to strive for freedom in Cuba, and I will do so as president,” he said.
South Florida Cubans make up a large portion of the Republican primary electorate, and both candidates are competing for them.
Romney has a Spanish-language television advertisement touting his endorsements from South Florida U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Gingrich has Spanish-language radio ads, one of which called Romney “anti-immigrant” and was taken off the air after complaints from the Romney camp and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio -- who has not endorsed a candidate but told the Miami Herald the charge is “inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign.”
Rubio, a charismatic tea party favorite elected in 2010, is considered an attractive vice presidential choice regardless of the Republican nominee. He could help woo Democrat-leaning Latinos into the GOP fold.
While Gingrich and Romney participated in the Univision forum in Miami, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania headed off to private fundraisers.
“We had a change in schedule a few days ago and asked [Univision] if they could move it and they said they couldn’t,” Santorum said to reporters Wednesday after a large rally at First Baptist Church in Naples.
Wednesday’s rally, at a megachurch, was by far Santorum’s largest crowd in Florida so far -- a crowd of slightly more than 1,000. Santorum said he will campaign in Florida on Thursday and Friday.
During the Univision forum, Ramos asked Gingrich about a new national poll showing President Barack Obama taking 70 percent of the Latino vote to Gingrich’s 22 percent in a hypothetical general election. Gingrich said a poll this early does not matter and said his goal would be to get a majority of the Latino vote in the general election, by stressing “values,” job creation and Latin American policy.
The poll, by Univision and ABC News, shows Romney ahead of Gingrich for Latino Republican primary voters in Florida, 35 percent to 20 percent.
Gary Segura, a political science professor at Stanford University who conducted the poll, said Gingrich has gained ground but Romney benefits from Latino Republicans being generally less conservative than the primary electorate and from his South Florida congressional endorsements.
Segura said immigration reform is a powerful issue to the Latino community but is trumped, by far, by jobs and the economy.
The Associated Press and Andrew Abramson of The Palm Beach Post contributed to this article.
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