MIAMI — The two-man slugfest for the Republican presidential nomination migrated to South Florida Wednesday, where Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich competed for the support of Hispanic voters who account for one in 10 Republicans likely to vote in the state’s Jan. 31 primary.
The candidates’ courting of Hispanics, including the GOP-leaning Cuban-American community, was peppered with attacks against each other, including a Gingrich radio ad labeling Romney “the most anti-immigrant candidate.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who backs Romney, told reporters in a conference call that Gingrich was “a failed speaker” who presided over an explosion in pork-barrel spending.
The two candidates have been running even among Florida voters, but Romney is faring much better than Gingrich among Hispanics, a new Univision/ABC poll shows. Romney had 49 percent of the Hispanic vote in the poll, compared with 23 percent for Gingrich.
Romney has been boosted by the backing of influential Cuban-American lawmakers such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.
And he appears to have some unofficial support from Sen. Marco Rubio, perhaps one of the most admired Republican lawmakers in the state. Rubio, who said he is not endorsing either candidate, on Wednesday criticized Gingrich for the anti-Romney radio ad, telling the Miami Herald the spot is “inflammatory” and “inaccurate.”
The Gingrich camp plans to pull the ad, but Rubio’s rebuke underscored Gingrich’s reputation among Hispanic voters as an unpredictable bomb-thrower who can’t win in November.
Some Hispanic voters told The Washington Examiner they view Romney as the more stable candidate and say they don’t appreciate Gingrich’s negative campaign tactics.
“He’s been a very controversial person and to me that’s a factor in the election because I think independent voters are less likely to vote for Gingrich than they would be for Romney,” said Jorge Machado, who was born in Cuba. “It is very important we have a candidate that can become president.”
Romney addressed the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC in Miami, where he promised that, as president, he would help bring Democracy to Cuba and “Fidel Castro will finally be taken off this planet.”
Both candidates also participated separately in a forum with the Spanish-language television network Univision, where Gingrich told the audience he supports allowing people who have been living illegally in the United States for 20 years or more to remain legally. The rest, he said, should return to their home countries and apply for legal entry back into the United States under a reformed guest worker program.
Gingrich called Romney’s plan to encourage illegal immigrants to leave on their own by removing incentives that cause them to stay “an Obama-level fantasy.”
Gingrich was asked about his efforts as House speaker to impeach then-President Clinton over his sexual relationship with a White House intern, even as Gingrich was carrying on an extramarital affair with his current wife, Callista.
Gingrich said the two cases were different because Clinton “lied under oath about it.”
He said he was not concerned about Romney’s lead among Hispanics in Florida and that as the GOP nominee, “I have a hunch by this fall we may do better than any Republican since Reagan,” with Hispanic voters.
