RSS Feed of the blog

Contributors:

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

Reporter Christian M. Wade has covered the City of Tampa since 2008. 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

Tribune Politics Coverage

Florida Political Blogs:

• State Of Sunshine
• Pushing Rope
• Interstate4Jamming
• News Service of Florida
• FLA Politics
• Sayfie Review/

More Resources:

• TBO.com Home Page
• TBO.com Politics
• TBO.com News Updates
• Live Traffic Updates
• TBO.com Communities

News Blog Search

Advanced Search

Most Recent Entries

• Obama to open state hq in Ybor
• RADM Faller Named Centcom Director of Operations, BG Brown Nominated For Second Star
• Scholarship Launched In Honor Of Gunny Terry Ball Jr. , Killed in Iraq in 2005
• LeMieux wins GOP women club’s straw poll
• Wounded Tampa Marine Comes Home To Hero’s Welcome
• 4 Troops Die This Week Supporting OEF
• MacDill Runway Reopens, Its Birds Soon To Return Home
• Clearwater Coast Guard Unit Wins DoD Family Readiness Award
• ‘Packing Party’ In Largo Saturday For USS Makin Island Sailors
• $34 Million For New Joint Special Operations University Campus In FY13 Budget Plan
• Obama to raise big-time coin with Vince Carter, John Morgan
• Meet The Winners
• Tampa Council blasts Alexander budget “insult” to USF
• Hot St. Pete Chilli Cook-Off To Benefit Help Our Troops On Saturday
• Obama launches “Truth Team” in Fl, other states

More

• Breaking News
• Command Post Tampa
• Fact Finders - Databay Blog
• Guestbook: Remembering The Fallen Soldiers
• Fresh Squeezed Politics
• Political Safari

Monthly Archives

• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011

Romney commits to debates

Posted Jan 21, 2012 by William March

Updated Jan 21, 2012 at 01:11 PM

Ending several days of uncertainty, Mitt Romney has committed to participate in two debates leading up to the Jan. 31 Florida primary, including the University of South Florida debate Monday night.

Questions arose about the fate of the Tampa event when Romney declined over the past week to promise to appear.

In an email statement today, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said Romney “looks forward to participating in two spirited debates in Florida and showing Sunshine State voters why he is the strongest candidate to defeat President Obama and fix our economy.”

NBC News also issued a statement noting that the debate will be “the first weekday primetime airing of a primary debate on a broadcast network in the 2012 election cycle.”

Whether the debate would get national television play and whether Romney would participate seemed uncertain during the week, after senior Romney political strategist Stuart Stevens said in an interview Wednesday that there have been too many debates and that the campaign hadn’t committed to either the Tampa debate or one in Jacksonville Jan. 26. NBC then changed its listings for Monday night, putting other shows in the debate’s 9-11 p.m. time slot.

Rolmney’s commitment to debate in Florida, a state in which he hopes a big win will seal his inevitability as the GOP nominee, came as he appeared to be facing a stronger-then-expected challenge from Newt Gingrich in South Carolina.

As recently as Jan. 10, Romney held double-digit leads in polls in South Carolina. As South Carolinians went to the polls today, however, Gingrich appeared to be leading—he held a five-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in the state as of Friday.