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Romney, Giuliani Target McCain In Florida Race

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By BILLY HOUSE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

Updated: 01/24/2008 12:15 am

TAMPA - Mitt Romney returned to Tampa on Wednesday, stressing his business resume to gain the upper hand on Sen. John McCain and other GOP presidential foes as the slumping economy may be fast surpassing national security as the top issue.

It's a tack that helped the former Massachusetts governor win the party's primary in economically hard-hit Michigan, his native state. Whether voters in Tuesday's Florida's presidential primary have become more worried about the dollar's slide than the Iraq war and terrorism, however, is not so certain, pollsters say.

"Obviously, the economy is getting to be a bigger concern. And obviously, Romney wants it to become a bigger concern," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, which is polling Floridians this week.

Latest publicly released polls have indicated the winner-take-all race for Florida's 57 GOP delegates is a statistical tie between McCain, Romney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee - with McCain entering the week with a slight edge.

Romney on Wednesday chose the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute as the setting for his Tampa campaign stop, followed by an appearance at an afternoon rally of about 150 supporters outside the nearby Alfano Conference & Banquet Center.

In seeking to set himself apart, Romney said at a Moffitt news conference: "You have that executive leadership where you learn how to pull together a team of people to listen to different ideas, to establish a course of action, to hire the people to carry out that course of action, to get budgets for it.

"And there are others whose experience has been very different," Romney said.

Romney also said Washington was broken and took a not-so-subtle swipe at McCain without mentioning him by name, saying the solution is not "sending the same people back - just putting them in different chairs."

Mostly, however, Romney emphasized his 25 years of business experience, his leading the 2002 Winter Olympics, and his work as a Massachusetts governor.

Romney earlier toured a lab at the center and delivered a speech to employees, describing how he has worked to help hospitals provide better care to more people, at a lower cost.

Giuliani, who hopes Florida will save his troubled campaign, has flipped his early campaign emphasis from national security to his being an economic "fixer."

He told backers in an e-mail Wednesday: "With the volatility in the stock markets leaving millions of Americans uncertain about the future, it's important that our next President have experience in turning around an economy in peril and putting people back to work. In New York, I was chief executive of the 17th-largest economy in the world, cut taxes 23 times and cut a 10 percent unemployment rate in half."

Giuliani also has been attacking McCain's credentials to lead in tough economic times, criticizing the senator's votes against such things as cutting capital gains taxes.

With former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson out of the race, and Huckabee pulling back his resources in the state, there were clear signs Wednesday the McCain campaign itself was feeling some shift in the political terrain.

McCain's campaign quickly launched a new TV ad in Florida declaring: "Floridians are concerned about the threat of radical Islamic extremism and their economic security.

"There's no one who will work harder to protect our shores and protect your pocketbooks," McCain's ad states.

During the rally after the Moffitt visit, the Romney campaign sought to depict the Florida battle as boiling down to a two-way race between Romney and McCain, though acknowledging Romney continues to trail, even if slightly.

"A couple of points is not a big lead," said Al Cardenas, the former Florida GOP chief who is chairing Romney's state campaign.

Reporter Billy House can be reached at (202) 641-5080 or bhouse@tampatrib.com.

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