It’s all or nothing in Florida GOP race

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

JACKSONVILLE, Florida - For the Republican presidential contenders, it’s all or nothing on primary day in Florida. The winner will get all 57 Republican delegates at stake.

Here’s what some Florida voters were saying after they cast their ballots in two Jacksonville precincts.

This is neither a scientific nor a representative sample. It is simply an array of voters who cast their ballots and were willing to explain why they voted as they did.

In mostly blue-collar precinct 11C at the Oceanway Assembly of God Family Life Center in north Jacksonville, Ken Westbrook said he’d voted for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

“He’s a conservative Christian,” explained Westbrook. It was not any one position that Huckabee took so much as “his history and his lifestyle,” said Westbrook.  “One wife, that sort of stuff. He has lived a moral lifestyle.”

Westbrook himself is a Baptist pastor, as Huckabee was before entering politics.

“I thought all of them were good; I don’t have a serious problem with any of them – except maybe Ron Paul” whose position on the Iraq war Westbrook disagrees with.

Confidence in Huckabee
Sheridan Kernop, a legal assistant, said Huckabee “was absolutely the best choice. I’ve been researching my candidates pretty well and (Mitt) Romney was in the running when I thought Huckabee was not going to be an issue. I always liked Huckabee, but I didn’t think the country would get behind him. But now that the country is starting to get behind him, I think that is the way to go.”

Tom Curry / msnbc.com Jacksonville, Fla. Republican Sheridan Kernop voted for Mike Huckabee in Tuesday's primary

Asked whether she’d considered voting for Sen. John McCain, Kernop replied simply, “McCain’s too old.” The Arizona senator is 71.

She also rejected former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. “His views on same-sex marriage -- it’s just completely killing him,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled out of the race this weekend.”

Huckabee “has good Christian morals and that’s the reason I’m voting for him,” said Ann Heath, who works at the driver’s license bureau. Why did she not choose Romney instead of Huckabee?

“The honest truth? Because he’s a Mormon.”

The support for Huckabee in this blue-collar precinct, despite his scant funding and his loss in the Jan. 19 South Carolina primary, raises the question of whether he is strong enough to take away some voters who might otherwise have considered voting for Romney, if Huckabee weren’t on the ballot.

Tom Curry / msnbc.com Mike Ceribelli voted for Ron Paul Tuesday.

A Ron Paul voter explains
Mike Ceribelli, an information technology specialist, said he voted for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. “Everybody else really disappoints me. I couldn’t distinguish a difference between them. He really stood out.”

If Paul is elected president, Ceribelli said the most important thing he wants him to do is “stick to the Constitution and keep to his voting record. If it is not in the Constitution, he votes ‘no.’ I think our forefathers were pretty intelligent people when they wrote that and they had the insight to see what kind of issues a country is going to have in the future. If there’s a problem with it, then amend the Constitution.”

He added, “The best thing he could do is get rid of the Federal Reserve. It’s a private corporation; they shouldn’t be controlling our money.”

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