Hillsborough County as a whole is a socially conservative region. Five of the seven member Board of County Commissioners are Republican, and the vast majority of legislative seats (particularly outside of Tampa) are all possessed by GOP members.
But the county went Blue in '08, supporting both Barack Obama and the first openly gay County Commissioner in its history in Democrat Kevin Beckner.
With Florida being considered a must-win for the Romney forces, volunteers met up at the Hillsborough Republican Party headquarters in Brandon for what the campaign called "Super Saturday," one of 30 around the state (and one of hundreds across the nation).
Coordinating the effort on Saturday was Jeff Bechdel, just named the Romney communications director for Florida. He said winning Hillsborough this time around is "incredibly important."
"We've got 2,000 calls as of this morning," he said talking to CL at 12:30 in the afternoon, where staffers and volunteers had begun reaching out to all voters, not just Republicans, from 9 am. The office was scheduled to be open until 9 p.m.
"Throughout that 12 hour period we're going to be reaching a lot of people..the I-4 corridor is important, but Hillsborough is huge."
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2012.