Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

Contributors:

Reporter William March has covered state and national politics since 1994. Email

Reporter Mike Salinero has covered Hillsborough County government for The Tampa Tribune since 2007. Email

Reporter Lindsay Peterson has been a general assignment reporter at the Tampa Tribune since 2005, focusing on higher education since 2009. Email

Florida Political Blogs:

News Blog Search

Advanced Search

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

Gingrich holds first campaign event in Tampa

Posted Sep 13, 2011 by William March

Updated Sep 13, 2011 at 07:56 PM

Tonight, Newt Gingrich held his first presidential campaign event in Tampa—a book-signing and screening of his film, “A City Upon A Hill,” sponsored by the Tampa Bay Young Republicans Club.

A crowd of 50 or so gathered at Lowry Park Zoo for the event.

Gingrich, former U.S. House speaker, hasn’t progressed in the GOP primary for president, hovering in low single digits in polls, but said he expects that to change.

He also denied that keeping his name in the hat for president is a way of selling more of his books and films.

“If I focused commercially on the things (his wife) Callista and I have done, movies, books, etc., I’d make vastly more money than running around the country going to debates and making speeches,” he said.

Gingrich said he and his wife are “really worried about his country’s future.” To solve the nation’s problems, “You ought to hav somebody who’s actually accomplished them before and if you look at my record of four years of balancing the budget, bringing unemployment down from 5.6 to 4.2 percent, first tax cut in 16 years, welfare reform, I think you can make a pretty good case that of all the candidates I’m the only one that’s actually achieved in Washington change on a very large scale.”

“A City Upon A Hill,” he said, is about American exceptionalism, the belief that America is a special nation—some say chosen by God for world dominance—that is more virtuous than other civilizations.

Gingrich said it’s about “the nature of American exceptionalism, why American exceptionalism matters, why your rights come from God as seen by our founding fathers, and what that means for us today.”