THE VILLAGES, FL - Polls opened early Tuesday in Florida, where Mitt Romney is pushing for a big win over Newt Gingrich.
The candidates were quiet Tuesday morning, with Romney having no events until the evening.
Reciting the words to America the Beautiful has long been a part of his stump speech, but ending the final full day of campaigning here Monday Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, felt so good that he sang instead.
Under the banner "Florida is Romney country" draped across a picturesque yellow shop in The Villages, Romney led the large crowd in song.
Gone were the references to his main competitor, former House speaker Gingrich, that began his speech just a few hours earlier in Jacksonville. There Romney welcomed several hundred people to his morning rally inside a chilly warehouse and told them Gingrich "didn't like" the two Florida debates.
"He said in the first debate he didn't do well because the crowd was too quiet," Romney said. "He said he didn't do well (in the second Florida debate) because the crowd was too loud."
Those were just excuses, Romney said. Instead, Gingrich was fizzling in Florida because "people actually saw him in those debates, listened to his background and experience. They learned, for instance, that he was paid $1.6 million to be a lobbyist for Freddie Mac and they said, 'That's not what we want in the White House.' "
Romney's demeanor comes at the end of a week where the ads have gotten nastier, the rhetoric hotter and the lead in the polls has changed hands. One thing has remained constant: It's a two-man race for Florida's delegates between Gingrich and Romney.
The two other remaining GOP candidates left the state days ago. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas headed to Maine on Friday. Former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania left over the weekend after his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was hospitalized. Instead of returning to Florida, he visited Nevada and the battlegrounds of Missouri and Colorado.
Meanwhile, Gingrich campaigned in Tampa flanked by one former candidate, businessman Herman Cain, and Michael Reagan, a radio talk show host and son of former president Ronald Reagan. Gingrich called Romney's attacks "dishonest" and told reporters not to count him out.
At the start of the Florida campaign nine days ago, Gingrich had a 5-percentage-point lead over Romney; now he's trailing Romney in most polls by at least 10 points.
"I'll tell you what, there's nothing like 17-and-a-half million dollars of false ads to make a big difference," Gingrich told reporters. "The reason that I seemed flat on the second debate in Florida is I've never seen a candidate for president that methodically dishonest. ... That's why I was quiet because there was no simple way to call him out (on what were) a series of falsehoods."
He has pledged to campaign all the way until the convention no matter what happens in Florida.
The back and forth has proved tiresome to many voters, who worry they will provide fodder for President Obama in the general election. Ken Hess, 44, a business owner and Gingrich supporter from Tarpon Springs, said a truce would be difficult to manage this far into the contest.
"I think it's at the point there's too much bad blood and they can't stop, because if one stops the other will be like, 'Oh, here's my opening,' " Hess said. "If they can't handle this, wait until the Obama (campaign) opens up."
"You've got to be vetted," he added.
Laurence Railey, 31, said he was undecided but was leaning heavily toward Gingrich.
"Newt's got to say, 'If Romney's going to attack me, I'm just going to attack him back,' " said Railey, a Web developer from Tampa. "But he's a much stronger candidate than Romney."
Vicki Schneider, 68, a Romney supporter and retired teacher from The Villages, said she liked the fact Romney was Mormon and that he had clear "values" and "integrity."
She said the ads didn't change her opinion of Romney, but said Gingrich's reaction to them cast him in a poor light.
"The things he says," Schneider said. "It's just bad."
At Romney's Monday evening rally at The Villages, resident Ann Zarnoth, 72, who worked for a large printing company before she retired, said she was initially a Gingrich supporter but has since changed her mind.
"He has too much baggage," she said. "I just feel like Romney's more electable."
By: Jackie Kucinich, USA TODAY
USA Today