Romney wins big in Florida, sets sights on Obama

Thursday, February 02, 2012

WASHINGTON, USA (AP) — Mitt Romney looked toward Nevada on Wednesday, heading to the next Republican nominating contest with a fat campaign bankroll and a renewed sense of inevitability as the challenger to President Barack Obama. The former Massachusetts governor clobbered Newt Gingrich by 14 percentage points in the Florida primary Tuesday.

Ten days after Gingrich hammered Romney by a similar margin in South Carolina,

one of the most conservative American states, the turbulent Republican nominating contest took another dramatic turn in Florida, which awards all of its party delegates to the top vote-getter and gives Romney momentum as the race heads to western states.

Florida will also be a key battleground in the general election later this year as a large and diverse state with a history of backing candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Romney and his allies poured roughly $16 million into Florida television advertising for the primary alone.

Romney, who has a massive financial advantage over Gingrich, spoke as though he was the presumptive nominee Tuesday night, declaring himself ready "to lead this party and our nation."

"Mr President, you were elected to lead, you chose to follow, and now it's time to get out of the way," he said.

Obama's campaign issued a fund-raising appeal yesterday focused on the millions that Romney and his supporters have poured into negative ads.

"That's ugly, and it tells us a lot about what to expect from Romney if he wins the Republican nomination," said campaign manager Jim Messina. "They're going to try to spend and smear their way to the White House."

With Obama vulnerable in his bid for a second White House term because of the slow US economic recovery, about half of Florida primary voters said the most important factor for them was a candidate who could defeat the president, according to exit poll results conducted for The Associated Press and television networks.

Not surprisingly, in a state with an unemployment rate hovering around 10 per cent, about two-thirds of voters said the economy was their top issue. Florida was one of the hardest hit states in the collapse of the US housing market that caused a meltdown of the American financial sector in the final months of the George W Bush presidency.

Romney, who had failed to draw much above a quarter of the vote in three previous primary and caucus contests in smaller states, won almost half the votes in Florida's four-person race. That damages Gingrich's contention that Romney is failing to attract a plurality of voters.

Returns from 100 per cent of Florida's precincts showed Romney with 46 per cent of the vote to 32 per cent for Gingrich. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum had 13 per cent, and Texas congressman Ron Paul seven per cent.