• ANUARY 31, 2012, 3:18 P.M. ET

Romney Looks for Big Florida Win Against Defiant Gingrich

  

By LAURA MECKLER, LOUISE RADNOFSKY and SIOBHAN HUGHES

Mitt Romney looked for a big leap ahead in his quest for the GOP presidential nomination as Florida Republicans voted Tuesday, while Newt Gingrich vowed to fight on no matter the result.
"Doing well in Florida is a pretty good indication of your prospects nationally," Mr. Romney said Tuesday at his Florida campaign headquarters in Tampa.
Across the state, at a polling station in Orlando, Mr. Gingrich promised: "This is a long, long way from being over."

Joe Skipper/Reuters

People arrived at a polling place in Boca Raton to vote in the Florida Republican presidential primary Tuesday.

Mr. Romney, who spent nearly $7 million on television ads in Florida and has built up a significant lead in the polls, hoped a decisive win in the state's primary would lend an unstoppable momentum as the nomination contest soon spreads out across the country. His advisers believe that Florida may have presented the last real threat to his claim on the nomination.
On Monday, Mr. Romney projected a sense of confidence, singing an extended rendition of "America the Beautiful."
The voting arrived after a nasty week of campaigning, with Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, trading harsh accusations in person and through millions of dollars in television ads. The winner will take all 50 delegates at stake, the biggest prize yet.
Mr. Romney worked to paint Mr. Gingrich as a creature of Washington and an erratic leader prone to offering "grandiose" ideas, such as building a colony on the moon. On Tuesday, Mr. Romney defended his aggressive strategy against Mr. Gingrich, delivered via tough stump speeches and harsh attacks from surrogates, as well as millions of dollars in negative advertising from his campaign and an outside group supporting him.
"He really can't whine about negative campaigning when he launched a very negative campaign in South Carolina," Mr. Romney told reporters. "If you're attacked, I'm not going to just sit back. I'm going to fight back and fight back hard."
For his part, Mr. Gingrich tried to cast Mr. Romney as backed by monied interests on Wall Street and in Washington. "I have none of the establishment ties, and I will shake the system up," Mr. Gingrich said on CBS.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul are expected to compete for third place in Florida.
More than 30% of the expected Republican primary votes already have been cast through absentee or early balloting allowed under state law, according to the latest numbers from the Florida Republican Party, which is expecting a total turnout of between 1.5 million and two million voters.
In Orlando, Mr. Gingrich argued that the anti-Romney vote will remain significant and said Mr. Romney hasn't consolidated Republicans around his campaign. Mr. Gingrich played down his own fall in the 10 days since he decisively won the South Carolina primary.
"If you watch tonight, the conservative candidates are going to get far more votes than Mitt Romney," Mr. Gingrich told reporters Tuesday outside a polling station in a Baptist church. In recent days, he has suggested that he might persuade Mr. Santorum to drop out and convert to the Gingrich camp, and he has vowed to take his fight all the way to the Republican National Convention.
"The question is whether or not we can consolidate [behind] one conservative to surpass" Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich said. "Every poll shows me getting twice the vote that [Mr. Santorum] is getting."
Some voters said they had accepted that Mr. Romney was the likely nominee, regardless of their preferences.
"I don't love him, but I like him enough," said Glen Witherbee, 67 years old, who buys and sells wine and cast his vote for Mr. Romney in a suburb of Tampa. He had considered voting for Mr. Gingrich, but "lately I don't like what he's been saying." Mr. Gingrich had become very negative, he said, "and it's too much."
There were indications that the Romney attacks had taken their toll on the former House speaker.
"I think Gingrich is a dangerous guy," said Jeff Ralph, 57, who owns an insurance business and voted for Mr. Romney after his first choice, former Gov. Jon Huntsman, dropped out.
But James Calvin Young, 55, who voted in the Tampa suburbs, said he voted for Mr. Gingrich because he was "the most intelligent of all the candidates, has government experience, knows how to balance the budget." Mr. Young shrugged off the negative advertising, saying "everyone's got baggage—Romney has some."
Behind the scenes, the Gingrich campaign moved to reassure donors and supporters of its continued viability, releasing a strategy memo Monday that argued the geography and structure of the nomination race now favor Mr. Gingrich.
After Florida, the contest moves to a much wider stage in states that will award delegates even to candidates who come in second or third, Gingrich aides said. They argue the multistate nature of the race will blunt Mr. Romney's financial supremacy by making it tougher to bombard individual states with TV ads, as Mr. Romney and his supporters did in Florida.
Nevada is next to vote, holding caucuses on Saturday. Ten states, including several in the South, vote on Super Tuesday March 6.
Attempting to put the anticipated Florida loss in perspective, Gingrich advisers noted that just 5% of all delegates will have been apportioned after Florida and the three opening races of the contest, and that Georgia alone will award more delegates than Florida, which had its tally halved when it set its primary in January against the wishes of party leaders.
Meantime, the Romney camp believes its organizational and financial superiority will make it hard for Mr. Gingrich to keep up.
Even some Gingrich supporters suspect that their man is likely to lose.
"I've pretty much accepted the fact that Romney's going to be the nominee," said Steve Shaw, who works for an alcohol-rehabilitation facility based in South Carolina but was in Tampa for work. He voted for Mr. Gingrich in South Carolina. "I don't like it, but I accept it. I prefer anybody over Obama."
—Sara Murray contributed to this article. Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com, Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com   COPY : COPY http://online.wsj.com/