Connie Mack starts week-long bus tour with a day of college football

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Connie Mack began the first of a weeklong bus tour Saturday, stoking the college crowds at tailgate events starting in Gainesville, where the the candidate's Gators were playing the Kentucky Wildcats and ending in Tallahassee, where the Seminoles play the Clemson Tigers.

The trip is one of three bus tours the campaign plans in an attempt to drum up support from Republican-leaning conservative counties of North and Central Florida, the one region of the state where polls show Mack leading Democrat incumbent, Bill Nelson.

In Tallahassee, Mack stopped at the Romney/Ryan tent at Doak Campbell Stadium Saturday evening, where Josh Romney was the celebrity of the moment. With a loudspeaker blaring excerpts from his Dad's stump speech, Josh stood for an hour mugging for photos with co-eds and fans dressed in garnet and gold.

Mack dismissed the recent polls, including a poll by the Herald/Times, which show  him trailing Nelson by between 8 and 14 percentage points. He said his internal polls show the race much closer.

His reasoning: the 11-12 percent undecideds are "Republican leaning, so we think we'll get a large share of that."

Mack also hopes to narrow the margin by invigorating the base. On Sunday, he attends an NRA gun show in Jacksonville and travels down the Space Coast with a series of meet and greets that include an event with his primary challenger, Dave Weldon.

Mack, who refused to debate Weldon and other primary challengers, has now found himself on the defensive in his attempts to get Nelson to agree to more than one debate.

"I'm sure he's going: 'ah, I've got a lot of money in the bank and some of the polling shows me up and I don't want to make a mistake,'' he said. "I think the people of the State of Florida say, we want to know what the differences are all about and a debate is the way to do it."

He says that Nelson shouldn't treat him as Mack treated his opponents in the primary because "we're in a much more competitive race." In the summer, Mack's competitors, he said were "35 points behind us."

Photos: Connie Mack stops to take photo with Lexie Langley, 11, of Tallahassee; Josh Romney poses with FSU co-eds

Paul Ryan to Little Havana: 'We will be tough on Castro'

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan got the Cuban exile seal of approval Saturday at a campaign rally in Little Havana where he pledged to hold a hard line against the Castro regime.

The Republican vice presidential candidate did not mention that he once opposed the U.S. trade embargo against the island, but he pointed to his change of heart — prompted by Miami’s current and former Cuban-American Republicans in Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart.

“They’ve given me a great education — lots of us in Congress — about how we need to clamp down on the Castro regime,” Ryan told supporters at the Versailles restaurant. “We will be tough on Castro, tough on [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez.”

Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, has voted against the embargo at least three times. The Midwest tends to see trade opportunities in agriculture with Cuba.

 

Ryan began supporting the embargo in 2007 as he started to ascend the House Republican leadership ranks. And on Saturday he began criticizing President Barack Obama’s policies toward the island. The Obama administration has made it easier for families and certain groups to travel and send money to Cuba.

 

Ryan said he and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney would take a different approach.

“We will not keep practicing this policy of appeasement,” Ryan said. “We will be tough on this brutal dictator.”

More here.

FBI examines Wite-Outed invoices, envelopes that were cash-stuffed in David Rivera investigation

A key witness in a federal grand jury case involving U.S. Rep.David Rivera is still missing, but she left important evidence behind for investigators: at least four envelopes that had been stuffed with unreported campaign cash.

Ana Alliegro, a Republican political operative, delivered the cash-stuffed envelopes to a Hialeah mail house that sent out fliers in a congressional race against a Rivera political rival, the mail house owner told the FBI.

The FBI has the envelopes to check for fingerprints and handwriting comparisons.

Also in the hands of FBI agents: at least six invoices initially made out to the attention of David Rivera — all marked paid “cash” — to cover the mailings for Democratic primary challenger Justin Lamar Sternad, a suspected Rivera straw-man candidate. The congressman demanded that his name be removed from the invoices with Wite-Out, documents and interviews show.

Alliegro went missing two weeks ago, shortly after her computer was seized by FBI agents and just hours before she was scheduled to talk to a federal prosecutor about her involvement in the Rivera-Sternad operation. She also had been jailed by Miami cops on an old suspended driver-license warrant.

“Am I worried? Yes,” Mauricio Padilla, her lawyer, said Friday. “I have not heard or seen her. This has never happened to me before.”

Enrique “Rick” Yabor, who represents Sternad, said he and his client would not comment.

Full story here

Democratic superPAC poll: Joe Garcia 50%, David Rivera 41%

A new, Democratic poll shows Democrat Joe Garcia leading incumbent Republican Rep. David Rivera, 50 percent to 41 percent.

The poll was conducted by the House Majority PAC, a political action committee that backs democrats running for Congress, and the Service Employees international Union. The survey has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.9 percent.

The poll was conducted by the Benenson Strategy Group, a Washington D.C.-based Democratic polling firm. They made live calls in English and Spanish to 400 likely voters from Sept. 8-13.

A poll by the same firm conducted last month for the Garcia campaign showed Garcia ahead of Rivera 49 percent to 40 percent. And a poll released earlier this week by Democracy For America, a liberal PAC founded by Howard Dean, had Garcia up 46 percent to 39 percent.

The Hill, however, reported earlier this week that an internal Rivera poll has the incumbent congressman leading Garcia 44 percent to 38 percent.

Rivera handily defeated Garcia two years ago, 52 percent to 43 percent. Garcia lost to then-incumbent Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in 2008.

The newly redrawn Congressional District 26, however, is slightly less favorable to Republicans. It stretches from Kendall to Key West.

Read the PAC's release after the jump. The full memo is here.