GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich today announced campaign chairs and co-chairs for all of Florida’s 67 counties.

The Miami Herald reports that GOP state Reps. Michael Bileca and Carlos Trujillo will chair and co-chair (respectively) Gingrich’s campaign committee in Miami-Dade County, and Rep. Debbie Mayfield will chair the Indian River County committee.

Gingrich hired Jose Mallea, former campaign chief for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, as his Florida campaign director last week.

The Herald cites a Newt 2012 press release issued today that includes other Republicans close to Rubio: Monica Rodriguez, a former aide to Rubio in the Florida House; Karin Hoffman; Sam Rashid, chairman of the Rubio for Senate campaign in Hillsborough County; Dr. Miguel Fana, finance chair for Rubio for Senate; and Tony DiMatteo, the county chair for Rubio in Pinellas County.

The Herald adds that more than 20 “Gingrich backers were on Herman Cain’s team until his campaign fell apart.”

The release adds: “‘Campaigns are won on the ground and through the hard work of grassroots activists such as those who have joined Newt Gingrich’s team in Florida,’ said Deborah Cox Roush, Florida State Director of County Chairs.”

The list of Gingrich supporters in Florida brings together GOP members who in the past have supported among others John McCain and Sarah Palin, former President George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist, Bill McCollum, Gov. Rick Scott, Rep. Allen West and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Luján stood staunchly against the bill in his proposal.“You have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that their bill offers protection for the sacred, traditional, and cultural sites in the proposed area to be exchanged, but I don’t believe that to be true,” he said. “If it were true, then why is every major tribal organization in the country opposing this bill?”

Luján cited the National Congress of American Indians, the All-Indian Pueblo Council of New Mexico, the San Carlos Apache Tribe (whose 2,400 acres of land on the Tonto National Forest is most affected by the Act), and the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes of New Mexico, among many other U.S. tribes as having spoken out against the land swap. “We have a Trust responsibility to our tribal brothers and sisters, and those who oppose this responsibility will dismantle it piece by piece with a scalpel and not all at once with an axe,” he said.

Among those who voted against Luján’s proposed amendment were fellow New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce, who, according to MapLight, a website that tracks the voting records and campaign contributions of U.S. Congressmen, received $9,600 from mining interests. Similarly, Representatives Jeff Flake and Ben Quayle of Arizona also voted down the amendment, and received, respectively, $5,000 and $2,500 each from the mining industry.

Rep. Luján sent the New Mexico Independent this statement:

“It was unfortunate that my amendment to protect Native American sacred and cultural sites was not adopted.  Adoption of this simple amendment would have shown respect for the religious and cultural sites that are important to the many tribes in the region, in addition to recognizing that we have a responsibility to work with our tribal brothers and sisters on issues that impact their communities.  Opponents of my amendment will say that tribal consultation is part of the exchange, but frankly what is outlined in the bill is not sufficient to ensure protection of sacred sites.”

In a piece analyzing the GOP gathering at Mackinac Island this weekend, Politico reports Walberg had this to say on the nominee:

“Had Romney been the nominee [in 2008], I’d be in my third term now instead of my second term,” said Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who last year recaptured a seat he won in 2006 but then lost two years later in the Obama-led sweep.

Walberg, who has yet to make a presidential endorsement, said his decision on whether to back Romney “comes down to whether I think he’s the guy that can win.”

Schauer bested Walberg in that race 48.8 percent to 46.5 percent.

The Miami Herald reports that “Katherine Archuleta, the political director for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, is coming to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa from Friday to Sunday. She’ll meet with Democratic elected officials and the grassroots Obama leaders known as the Fall Fellows, who help recruit volunteers and man phone banks. At the same time, Vice President Joe Biden travels to Miami Beach to raise campaign cash.”

According to the Herald, the Obama reelection campaign is focusing on Hispanics. The Pew Research Center data shows that Hispanic voters supported Obama over GOP presidential candidate John McCain “by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election.”

A Gallup poll issued early this month indicates that Obama “earned the lowest monthly job approval rating of his presidency to date in August, with 41% of U.S. adults approving of his overall job performance, down from 44% in July. He also received term-low monthly job approval ratings from both Hispanics (48%) and whites (33%) and tied his lowest rating from blacks (84%).”

Gallup adds that “although Hispanics’ monthly approval of Obama dipped below 50% for the first time in August, more still approve than disapprove (48% vs. 37%) of his job performance.”

Matt Whitaker, formerly Gov. Pawlenty’s Iowa chairman, will join the Iowa Perry campaign as statewide co-chairman, serving alongside current statewide chairman, Robert Haus.

“We have a strong Iowa team that will help me take my vision to get America working again all across the Hawkeye State,” said Perry. “I am proud to have these top-notch individuals leading our efforts in Iowa, helping carry my record and vision for job creation and fiscal conservatism to caucus voters.”

Whitaker is managing partner of Whitaker Hagenow GBMG law firm in Des Moines. He served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 2004 to 2009. Whitaker also earned a bachelor’s degree, law degree and master of business administration degree from the University of Iowa. As an undergraduate, Whitaker was a tight end on the 1990 Big Ten Champion football team and played in the 1991 Rose Bowl and the 1991 Holiday Bowl.

Gov. Perry also named several individuals to the Iowa field team, including:

• Rob Anderson, Central Iowa, formerly served as regional field director on the Pawlenty campaign; received bachelor’s degree from University of California, Santa Barbara
• Robert Crawford, Statewide Volunteer Coordinator, formerly served on the Robertson for President campaign and has worked as a Realtor in Virginia, California and Iowa; attended University of Iowa
• Rachelle Crawford, Des Moines Headquarters, formerly worked as an educator in Virginia; earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa
• Gabe Haugland, North Central Iowa, served in the U.S military and led more than 50 combat missions in Operation Enduring Freedom; was a previous Cerro Gordo County organizer for Pawlenty; received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a law degree from Drake University
• Travis Holler, Northwest Iowa, formerly served as a regional field director for the Pawlenty campaign and aide to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell; received a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University
• Annie McEniry, Northeast Iowa, formerly worked as a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, legislative correspondent for U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Senate Finance Committee, and served on the Iowa Branstad-Reynolds 2010 campaign and the McCain-Palin presidential campaign; received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa
• Dane Nealson, Central Iowa, former served as a field representative on Pawlenty campaign, served as chairman of Iowa Federation of College Republicans and worked on Huckabee for President campaign; received bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University
• Drew Selden, Southwest Iowa, served as scheduler and researcher on Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley 2010 campaign and worked as PGA Tournament Director in West Palm Beach, Fla.; received bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University
• Mike Thom, Southeast Iowa, formerly served as field representative for Pawlenty campaign and legislative clerk in Iowa House of Representatives; received a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and master of public administration from Drake University

Perry previously announced Matt Gronewald as state director, Haus as state chairman and Ruth Haus as a senior consultant.

McCain’s office has told the press he won’t apologize and say his earlier remarks were not specific to this fire but merely that perhaps illegal immigrants cause fires.

A release from the National Tequila Party sums the situation up thusly:

In June 2011, Arizona Senator John McCain inappropriately blamed the Arizona fire blazes on “illegal” immigrants, and he has failed to apologize even though there was no factual evidence the fires were started by immigrants. New information has come full circle where we learnt two “legal” Arizona citizens face federal charges of leaving an unattended campfire that sparked the massive Wallow Fire this summer.

We insist that Senator McCain apologize for blaming the fires on immigrants because the hate climate in Arizona is flagrant. If McCain apologizes, it would send a positive message to the nation that native born Americans commit crimes, too, and we cannot and must not continue to blame undocumented immigrants and use them as scapegoats in an unjust manner. Hate crimes have increased 125% in Phoenix alone over the past few years, and this data should encourage McCain to do the right thing.

If McCain still has trouble apologizing for his ill chosen statement, we hope he will swallow his pride chased by a shot of Tequila which could only help us reverse the hate-filled climate in Arizona.

The Nov. 2 gala, to be held at the Newseum in Washington D.C., is intended to celebrate AUL’s 40th anniversary in the presence of about 80 federal lawmakers.

Co-chairing the event with Perry are U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.); the keynote speaker has yet to be confirmed.

AUL has listed as “honorary hosts” 16 U.S. senators — all Republicans — including Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), John McCain (Ariz.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Among the 63 U.S. House representatives listed as “honorary hosts” are 2012 GOP presidential contenders Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.). Other attending GOP representatives influential in the anti-abortion rights movement include Reps. Trent Franks (Ariz.), Mike Pence (Ind.), Joe Pitts (Pa.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Cliff Stearns (Fla.) and Allen West (Fla.).

Reps. Renee Ellmers (N.C.), Bill Huizenga (Mich.), Randy Hultgren (Ill.) and Chris Smith (N.J.) all participated in last month’s press conference about the report AUL drafted to encourage Congress to investigate — and then defund — Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

AUL’s gala is a pricey affair: The organization is asking supporters to become sponsors — for $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000 in order to offset the costs of the event.

In a recent lengthy profile on Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, the Christian Science Monitor describes how Yoest — who is not a physician, attorney nor lawmaker, though she has a doctorate of philosophy in government — has become “Public Enemy No. 1″ for abortion-rights advocates. In November, the group will celebrate its influence on select laws, such as defending the Hyde Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court and establishing the “intellectual groundwork” for the fetal homicide legislation that has passed in 38 states.

Despite four decades of lobbying and drafting model legislation to enact abortion restrictions throughout the country, much of the national recognition AUL has earned has come in 2011. Yoest’s group has taken credit for 22 of 86 anti-abortion laws enacted this year, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

In February, Mother Jones blamed AUL for controversial laws cropping up in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota that, if interpreted in a certain way, would have allegedly legalized the killing of abortion providers. AUL denied the accusation, claiming that however lawmakers might have adapted AUL’s model “Pregnant Woman Protection Act” was out of the organization’s control.

Ten days after the AUL gala, Yoest will set sail as a guest speaker on a National Review-sponsored cruise.

As of yet, Perry has not signed the Susan B. Anthony List’s highly-publicized anti-abortion pledge, but in other ways, Perry has already presented himself as an ardent abortion opponent and dedicated evangelical Christian. Perry’s relationship with AUL has been positive since he became governor of Texas in 2000. When AUL released its annual “Defending Life” publication of model legislation, Perry’s testimony was used to promote the publication:

This state-by-state scorecard of progress in the effort to defend life lets elected officials, grassroots activists and citizens know exactly where we are on our shared priority. I am proud that the report reflects the sweeping reforms we have enacted in Texas, saving thousands of lives in the process. This is not a book you leave on the shelf to collect dust. This information is ammunition in a fight that is far from over. I know you will find this guide informative and useful as you continue to promote and protect life in your state.

In AUL’s latest “State of the States” report card, Texas ranked fifth — making it one of the most restrictive states regarding abortion rights.

In May, Perry signed a controversial Texas bill into law requiring women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours after seeing a sonogram of their fetus. The law is facing litigation. He also signed into law a bill making “Choose Life” license plates available to Texas drivers, directing the revenue from those plates to state crisis pregnancy centers.

According to a recent analysis by NARAL Pro-Choice America about Perry’s abortion-related legislative record, “many of the laws he signed inject political interference into women’s private decision-making.”

Among the highlights of Perry’s record, NARAL noted that the governor signed a proclamation declaring April 2009 “Abortion Recovery Awareness Month” in Texas.

FERRECHIO: Governor Romney, turning to you, in 2008, you said you favored allowing American companies to hire more skilled foreign workers. With the unemployment rate now at 9.1 percent, do you still think that employers need to import more foreign labor?

ROMNEY: Well, of course not. We’re not looking to bring people in and — in jobs that can be done by Americans. But at the same time, we want to make sure that America is a home and welcome to the best and brightest in the world.

If someone comes here and gets a Ph.D in — in physics, that’s the person I’d like to staple a green card to their — to their diploma, rather than saying to them to go home.

Instead, we let people come across our border illegally or stay here and overstay their visa. They get to stay in the country. I want the best and brightest to be metered into the country based upon the needs of our employment sector and create jobs by bringing technology and innovation that comes from people around the world.

Romney has used the “stapling a green card” line before many times, both in this campaign and in his 2008 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Despite being the preferred candidate for many immigration enforcement hawks who distrusted Romney’s opponent Sen. John McCain, Romney joined McCain in voicing strong support for giving foreign students at U.S. graduate schools permanent residence.

Indeed, “stapling a green card to their diploma” has become a catchphrase for high-skilled immigration reformers. It’s a policy strongly favored by many Silicon Valley and high-tech firms, whose workforce is disproportionately foreign-born. It’s even inspired the name of a bill, the STAPLE Act, repeatedly introduced by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Flake’s bill, which has both Democratic and Republican cosponsors, grants an exemption to the cap on permanent visas to any Ph.D graduate in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

Permanent residency for U.S. Ph.D grads is one of the few policy ideas that establishment Republicans and business lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce see as something that shouldn’t cause much partisan friction and thus can be dealt with on its own. But Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) who chairs the immigration subcommittee in the Senate, have rejected the idea of pushing high-skilled immigration reform bills, such as the STAPLE Act, without a comprehensive reform effort that also deals with issues related to low-skilled and undocumented immigration. And many tea party and conservative Republicans reject the idea of any immigration reform, including the STAPLE Act, without further border security measures.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chair of the House immigration subcommittee, this year introduced the IDEA Act, which goes further than the STAPLE Act by expanding permanent residency visas for foreign-born entrepreneurs and STEM workers. Not a single Republican has endorsed Lofgren’s bill.

Nevertheless, Lofgren’s bill has strong support among high-tech companies, which have signaled impatience with the GOP’s current enforcement-only ideology. Unusually, these companies have given more to Democrats than to Republicans, and in particular to Democrats who care about issues such as high-skilled immigration. This can be seen in the strong support Lofgren receives from Silicon Valley: Computer- and internet-related industries were far and away the top donors to her 2010 campaign, and no single House candidate received more from internet-related companies than Lofgren in the 2009-2010 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

It’s clear that among the GOP candidates currently running for president, Romney is Silicon Valley’s pick. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, computer- and internet related industries have donated $145,805 to Romney’s campaign in this election cycle, more than any other candidate except for Barack Obama. But whether Romney will continue to toe the strict “border security first” line that has become a tenet of GOP and tea party orthodoxy by endorsing, even in the smallest way, policy innovations like STAPLE remains to be seen. With the entrance of Gov. Rick Perry (Texas), himself a candidate with an ambiguous history on immigration, into the GOP primary, the question of whether enforcement-only is a necessary position for a GOP presidential candidate may become a salient issue in the weeks and months to come.

“First our firearms, then our farms,” one of the Tea Partiers called out, amid the hullabaloo, according to the Arizona Republic.

Baffled, McCain said no Congress would allow that to happen but few cared to hear it.

Indeed, the Gilbert, Arizona, crowd was riled up well before McCain arrived, upset that he had appeared to mock the naivete of Tea Party members of Congress by quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial that characterized them as deluded, as acting like they were hobbits in the Lord of the Rings trilogy battling the forces of evil.

Asked by the town hall folks to apologize, McCain said he didn’t understand, that he only meant that the drive to pass a balanced budget amendment was fantasy.

“Is there anything wrong that I said?” McCain asked. “I don’t know what to apologize for.”

In Colorado, 2010 Tea Party gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes became the GOP nominee despite and something of a national embarrassment to the state party, in part for warning voters against the Denver bike sharing program, which he said was part of a UN one-world government initiative that would deprive Americans of liberty and end in miserable domination.

Arizona’s Sen. Jon Kyl announced in February that he would not seek re-election in 2012. Palin would be seeking to fill his seat, presumably counting on the senior senator from Arizona, her erstwhile running mate in 2008 John McCain, for public support in the campaign.

Like many states, Arizona has residency requirements on the books that would bar someone like Palin from moving to the state to join the legislature — a candidate for Arizona state Senate has to have lived in the state for at least three years. But the U.S. Senate still sticks to the language in Article I of the Constitution, which only requires that a candidate be an “inhabitant” of the state in which he or she seeks office at the time of the election.

So Palin would have no legal problem running for U.S. Senate in Arizona and certainly may be able to garner some help from still-popular Sen. McCain, who defeated Democratic opponent Rodney Glassman in the 2010 election 59 to 35 percent. But could she win?

Well, she may have lost out on her chance to be “in charge of the Senate” back in 2008, but even just joining their ranks would an uphill struggle for Palin. The New Times’ King contends that Arizona’s trend toward conservatism and Palin’s fundraising prowess could make her a formidable candidate, and that “if Palin were to run for Senate in Arizona, there’s a pretty good chance she’d win.” Yet the most recent Public Policy Poll on Palin suggests that Palin is even less popular in Arizona than in the United States at large: 57 percent of Arizonans have an unfavorable view of Palin, compared to 56 percent of all Americans.