Romney ad goes up in Florida

Mitt Romney is extending his TV ads to Florida, the fourth state where viewers will see him jogging near the family's summer home in New Hampshire and hear a narrator extol his political and business resume.

The 30-second spot began airing last week in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Romney has spent heavily and is leading in the polls among the Republican presidential hopefuls. It was also his first ad in South Carolina, where he is trailing in the polls.

The campaign said this morning that the ad will begin airing today in selected markets in Florida, where Republicans moved up their primary to Jan. 29, just behind the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, and South Carolina primary. Michigan, where Romney grew up and is already well-known, also wants to shoehorn its primary into Jan. 15.

A new poll released today showed Romney running in third place among Florida Republicans with 11 percent support, behind Rudy Giuliani with 28 percent and Fred Thompson with 17 percent, and just ahead of John McCain with 10 percent.

Among Florida Democrats, Hillary Clinton led with 42 percent, well ahead of Barack Obama with 13 percent and John Edwards with 9 percent, according the Quinnipiac University Poll. The survey was conducted between Sept. 3 and Sept. 9 with 1,141 Florida voters. The margin of sampling error for both the 446 Democratic voters and the 438 Republican voters questioned was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

The ad features Romney's wife Ann, showing her giving a speech in which she declares, "Every place that Mitt has gone, he has solved problems that people said were nearly impossible."

The narrator then says that Romney turned around failing companies at Bain Capital, saved the 20002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and balanced the budget as Massachusetts governor without tax hikes (though he and the Legislature raised numerous fees).