Former former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive Herman Cain surprised Texas Governor Rick Perry with an upset victory on Saturday in a Republican presidential straw poll in Florida, dealing a disappointing loss to Perry two days after a shaky debate performance.
Perry, leading in the polls for the next year’s US Republican presidential nomination to run against Democratic US President Barack Obama, needed a victory in what was an early test of strength to salve the wounds left from a debate with his rivals on Thursday in which he struggled.
Instead, Cain, who is far behind the two top-tier candidates Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in national polls, won with 37 percent of 2,657 votes cast.
Perry was a distant second at 15 percent, just ahead of Romney, who won 14 percent despite not participating in the poll. Further back were former US senator Rick Santorum, US Representative Ron Paul, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman and US -Representative Michele Bachmann.
Florida’s straw poll is nonbinding and significant only in terms of showing a candidate’s strength in the state. State contests to pick the nominee do not start until next year.
The Perry camp shrugged off the results.
“Cain won, we still have work to do,” Perry spokesman Mark Miner said.
“It’s his day. The conservative message won today. We’ve been in this race for five weeks. We’re going to continue campaigning hard,” he said.
Miner put the focus on Romney’s third-place finish, saying Perry’s chief rival has been running for president for years and is still not breaking through.
“It’s more of what happened to Mitt Romney. He’s not going to be crowned president of the United States. He’s going to have to work for it. And after five-and-a-half years, he once again got rejected in a key state in the Republican primary process,” Miner said.
Perry created doubts among some conservatives at a Republican candidates debate on Thursday, which he said on Friday was not his best performance. He was criticized by his rivals for a Texas policy that allows children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at Texas colleges.
“Perry doesn’t stand for our constitutional values,” said delegate Kris Anne Hall, who voted for Cain. “Perry doesn’t stand up against illegal immigration.”
Perry surrogate Michael Williams, addressing the straw poll delegates on Saturday before the vote, sought to do some damage control for the Texas governor, who had addressed an Orlando breakfast earlier before campaigning in Michigan.
“We’re not electing a debater-in-chief, we’re electing a commander-in-chief,” said Williams, adding that no Texas illegal immigrant had received a handout for a free education.
Cain, who promotes himself as a pragmatic problem-solver with a clear tax reform plan, eagerly welcomed the victory.
“This is a sign of our growing momentum and my candidacy that cannot be ignored,” Cain said after his win.
Most political analysts give him no chance of winning the nomination.
However, Florida’s Republican Party noted that, since 1979, every winner of the Florida straw poll has gone on to become the nominee. Senator John McCain won it in the 2008 cycle and defeated Romney to become the nominee.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
RSS