USF-St. Pete students choose GOP campaigns to work on

The latest polls leading into Florida's January 31 presidential primary show Mitt Romney on top, with Newt Gingrich his closest competitor.

That's not exactly the way it played out this past Thursday in USF-St. Pete political scientist Judithanne Scourfield McLaughlan's "Road To The White House" class, where students listened to pitches from surrogates for all of the GOP campaigns except Huntsman's. Interning for a campaign is a key part of what's expected from the class.

At the end of the presentations (which also included a member of the Obama campaign team, as well as representatives from local Democratic and Republican organizations in St. Pete), students then congregated around the campaigns they'd decided to work with.

Romney and, not surprisingly, Ron Paul garnered the most support among the GOP, with four students each joining their local teams. But the most popular surrogate was Victoria Kirby, regional field director in West Central Florida for the Obama for America campaign.

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2012.