Although Mitt Romney has not yet captured the 1,144 delegates needed to officially become the GOP nominee for president, the former Massachusetts Governor is now moving towards a general election strategy against Barack Obama, which begins today for him with some major fundraising events in the northeast.
Romney now needs to court the middle, mainstream part of the electorate, some of whom were repelled by the extremist rhetoric employed over the past year in the Republican primaries. One natural place to start would be in trying to win back some Latino love, where Romney is getting killed in head-to-head polls against Obama with that key demographic.
Yet Romney still seems unsure how to go about it. On Monday he campaigned with Marco Rubio, who has come up with a watered down version of the Dream Act to help promising undocumented students to get legal status (but not citizenship) in the U.S. But Romney can't even commit to that at this point.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and his legal staff killed his controversial "clean zone" ordinance regarding protesters at the Republican Convention this summer. Now it's the "event zone," but it's still controversial.
And the Hillsborough County Democratic party is getting more active this week. Yesterday they announced a candidate to challenge longtime property appraiser Rob Turner.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2012.