MIAMI (CBSMiami) – after more than a week of GOP rallies across state along negative campaign ads on the radio and television, Florida’s Primary has finally arrived.

Republican voters across the state will cast their ballots Tuesday to see who will get the state’s 50 delegates for the GOP presidential nomination.

In the latest Rasmussen telephone poll, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (44 percent) was up by 16 points over his closest rival – former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (28 percent). Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, who have not been in Florida for several days, rounded out the field.

On Tuesday, Gingrich is scheduled to make four separate campaign stops in and around the Orlando area. Romney, who is in Tampa, has only one scheduled appearance.

On Monday at the Villages, a sprawling retirement community outside of Orlando, Romney said it’s time for a change if you want change.

“People realize if they want to see change in Washington, you just can’t elect the same people to take different chairs. you actually have to have new people come in and take over,” said Romney.

Romney is looking forward to a big win in Florida after Gingrich ran away with South Carolina.

“In South Carolina the crowds were great but you could sense it wasn’t going our way. Here the crowds are great and you can tell things are going our way,” said Romney.

Though down in the polls, Gingrich hopes he’ll be the one celebrating when the final tallies are reached. Monday night he rallied a crowd in Orlando. Earlier in the day he got a hand from Michael Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reason, and former candidate Herman Cain. Both of his daughters have also hit the campaign trail.

“he may not do supremely well. But he’s a fighter. He’s going continue and that’s what the American people should know,” said Gingrich’s daughter Kathy Lubbers, who lives on Key Biscayne.

Romney has vowed to stay in the fight until the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August. Before that, however, he has to face a number of other contests including Super Tuesday on March 6th when ten states hold their primaries.

Florida’s GOP Primary has generated tremendous voter turnout before Tuesday’s election day. In Broward, more than 32-thousand people have voted early or by absentee ballot. nearly 89-thousand have already cast their ballots in Miami-Dade.   Statewide, more than 635,000 Floridians had already voted as of Monday.  That’s more than the total vote in the South Carolina Primary.

Romney, Gingrich Battle For Votes In Florida Primary

NEW BACHELORETTE EMILY MAYNARD ANNOUNCED FOR SEASON 8: Start completing your applications, boys! Emily Maynard, a fan favorite by Brad Womack’s season of “The Bachelor,” will be the next “Bachelorette,” ABC formally declared today on “Good Morning America.”

“I believe she’s America’s sweetheart and I conceive it will be a home run,” host Chris Harrison told on “GMA.”

Emily Maynard, a single mom from Charlotte, N.C. who complete her tumultuous kinship with Womack, thirty-eight, last summer,

has signed on to star in the 8th installment of the hit realness show, which will premiere this spring. She will be the 1st single mom to star in the series.

“Emily feels improbably thankful to have got her 1st love when she was really young, and despite not having dated a lot, acknowledges what it is like to be sincerely in love,” ABC told in a press release now. “In the past 7 yrs, she has been looking for somebody with the same spark she’s for life, and she conceives that she will get her soul mate on ‘The Bachelorette.’”

Twenty-five-year-old Emily Maynard quickly won over Womack and fans of the appearance with her southern charm and emotional back tale. Maynard lost her fiancé NASCAR driver Ricky Hendrick in a 2004 plane crash, just ahead she acquired that she was pregnant. Their daughter Ricki, now six, was born in Oct 2005 and is the “apple of Emily’s eye.”

On the appearance, Womack wooed Maynard and then proposed to her in true “Bachelor” style, in the fairytale setting of a South African vineyard. off camera, their romance rapidly unraveled, plagued by distance and enviously allotting to tabloid reports.

“The day that Brad proposed was among the happiest days of my life,” she said “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison in a July 2011 interview on the breakup. “Not a day will go by that I will not regret how things turned out.”

Soon afresh crop of twenty-five men will contend for the blonde beauty’s heart, and the competition could be cutthroat, given the buzz surrounding Emily Maynard. (Remember that season seven contestant Bentley Williams admitted that he had been discomfited to learn that Ashley Hebert was “The Bachelotte” instead of Maynard, so we acknowledge interest is high).

Emily Maynard is “anticipating somebody who creates her laugh, does not take himself too severely and may be her best friend,” ABC told in the press release. “Emily Maynard is hoping that the 3rd time is the charm.”

What do you believe of the Maynard as the next Bachelorette? will she be better than the last Bachelorette Ashley Hebert? as democratic as Ali Fedotowsky? as lucky in love as Trista Sutter?

NEW BACHELORETTE EMILY MAYNARD ANNOUNCED FOR SEASON 8

Kim Painter is a veteran health reporter and columnist. She wrote USA Today’s long-running Your Health column and the more recent Parenting Part II column. She is a frequent contributor to Your Life. Follow Kim on Twitter: @KimPainter

Holly C. Corbett Bristol is a freelance writer and editor who has been published in national titles such as Women’s Health, Prevention, The LA Times, MensHealth.com. Holly is the co-author of The Lost Girls: three Friends. four Continents. One Unconventional Detour around the World, and co-creator of LostGirlsWorld.com, a travel and lifestyle website.

Cheryl Alkon is a health writer, editor and researcher, and the author of ‘Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-Existing Diabetes: Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby.’ Her work has appeared in more, Woman’s Day, Body+Soul and the New York Times, among other print and online publications. for more about Cheryl, see www.CherylAlkon.com.

Maureen Linke is an online producer for Your Life and a regular contributor. She also has worked for CNN.com.

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