THE VILLAGES, Fla. -- The Republican Party of Florida is pushing back on reports that Mitt Romney’s campaign stacked the audience at the CNN debate Thursday in Jacksonville with its supporters -- a charge the party blames on aides to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“I’m sorry if the Newt campaign feels like they didn’t have their best night, but I can’t allow the RPOF to be the scapegoat for that,” spokesman Brian Hughes told NBC News by telephone Friday night. 

"We worked very hard,” Hughes added.  “The irony is there were some grumblings by Romney’s people in the hours before the debate that we had stacked it for Newt.”

(The state party, not the Romney campaign, was responsible for seating about three-quarters of the 1,200-seat venue.)

The pushback from the state party follows a story in the Huffington Post that quotes a Gingrich aide saying Romney’s campaign “definitely packed the room” in Jacksonville. 

The aide, Kevin Kellems, was apparently making a reference to applause Romney enjoyed during several sharp exchanges with Gingrich.  It marked a reversal of sorts for the former speaker, who won the support of crowds during two debates in South Carolina last week.

Romney campaign officials dismissed allegations that they packed the debate hall Thursday. One senior spokesman said he had invited only his parents.

First Thoughts: Romney owned Gingrich, but problems linger

Speaking in Orlando on Friday night, Romney compared the Gingrich campaign to Goldilocks complaining about her bowls of porridge being too hot or too cold.

"I'm looking forward to debating Barack Obama. I'm not going to worry about the crowd," Romney said.

Hughes tells NBC News that the state party worked to ensure that 900 seats went to unaffiliated Republican voters and remained off limits to volunteers and others connected to campaigns. There were 4,000 total requests for seats via the party’s website and county Republican offices.

Romney stresses support for immigration before Latino crowd

Hughes says that voters found to be affiliated with candidates were told to seek seats from the campaigns, each of which had an equally distributed number.

“Any time that we saw a name that we recognized, or had a suspicion, we contacted those people, and said, 'listen, you’re affiliated with X campaign,'" Hughes says.

The Florida Republican Party is not endorsing a candidate for president until the national party has a nominee.

NBC’s Garrett Haake contributed to this report.

Displaying just how important Florida is to the hopes of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the leading candidates for the GOP nomination and their supporters are spending almost $22 million, flooding the television and radio airwaves with ads supporting their candidates -- and mostly attacking the other.

Romney and friends have outspent Gingrich and his allies about 5-to-1 with the Super PACs leading the way, spending -- so far -- a combined $12 million, according to Republican ad tracker Smart Media Group Delta. The pro-Gingrich one, Winning Our Future, promises to spend another $2 million before Tuesday, but, at the end of the day, Gingrich and his allies will be outspent by at least double.

Here are the numbers:

Pro-Romney: $15.7 million (Restore Our Future $8.8m; Romney: $6.9m)

Pro-Gingrich: $3.9 million (Winning Our Future: $2.8m; Gingrich: $1.1m)Source: NBC/Smart Media Group Delta

Today, Gingrich placed another $855,000 on broadcast and cable with serious buys in Ft. Myers (1000 points), Jacksonville (1500 points), Orlando (1000 points), Tampa (700 points), and West Palm Beach (875 points). You can also find his ads on AEN, CNN, Discovery, ESPN, ESPN 2, the Food Network, HGTV, the History Channel, TNT, and USA.

Romney's campaign added about another $200,000 in the Panhandle (Mobile-Pensacola) as well as Tallahassee. Before this, he was not on air in these markets.

And it's not just in Florida. Restore Our Future is going up with another week of ads in Michigan, trying to ensure Romney, whose father was governor of the state, wins there. So far, Restore has spent $245,000 in Michigan.

The race in Florida may be changing again.

There are three robo-polls out today showing Romney back in the lead. NBC News does not endorse or report on automated polls.

But forget the polls, look at the rhetoric. Gingrich today leveled his harshest attacks yet on Romney in Florida after ignoring him at the NBC debate Monday night. If that suddenly rhetoric sharp rhetoric against Romney is any indicator, it may mean Romney’s regained the momentum.

Gingrich declared he was “angry” today. “I am angry," he said. "But I think I'm angry and every American should be angry.” He said of Romney, “How can somebody run a campaign this dishonest and think he's going to have any credibility running for president?”

He went on at a Tea Party rally: “This is the desperate last stand of the old order throwing the kitchen sink. I’m here as a citizen and I frankly don’t care what the Washington establishment thinks of me because I intend to change them.”

He charged that the ads are paid for “with the money taken from the people of Florida by companies like Goldman Sachs,” that are trying “to stop you from having a choice in this election.”

He added, in an attack he'd used in Iowa: “We aren't that stupid, and you aren't that clever.”

More evidence the tide may be turning. Romney's rhetoric on Gingrich was tame. And Romney mostly kept his focus on Obama, saying this is a "'Groundhog Day' presidency. … Nothing changes."

A day after it was revealed that the wife of a casino magnate, Miriam Adelson, had written a pro-Gingrich Super PAC a $5 million check, that group, Winning Our Future, says it is going up with a $6 million ad buy in Florida.

"I fully expect Newt to win Florida," Winning Our Future spokesman Rick Tyler told NBC News. "I think if he does win, this nomination process will be a lot shorter than all the pundits predicted.”

A Republican ad buying firm, Smart Media Delta, working with NBC News, confirms Winning Our Future is in the process of making 30-second and 60-second ad buys across the state.

One of the ads running will be a hard-hitting attack ad on Romney's health-care plan and for having said, "My views are progressive." (View the ad here, posted by The Washington Post, which first reported the news of the ad buy.)

“I think this is bold and new,” Tyler said. "And we have something old up already."

Winning Our Future currently has three ads running in the state, and they’re all positive Gingrich ads -- "Prosperity," "Jobs," and "Fighter." This new one will be added to the rotation tomorrow.

Gingrich and his allies have been outspent $14 million to $500,000 in Florida up until now by the Romney campaign and Restore Our Future, the Super PAC supporting Romney. Restore Our Future has expanded its ad buys outside of Florida, NBC News learned this afternoon. They are the first PAC to go on air in Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona now as well.

Newt Gingrich's former consulting company will release his contracts with Freddie Mac this evening before the NBC debate, a spokeswoman confirmed. Gingrich was reportedly paid $1.6 million under the contracts and Romney had made disclosure of the contracts a major issue in the last day.

The spokeswoman for the Center for Health Transformation said she documents will be released by 7 p.m.

No one can say that Newt Gingrich shies away from controversy. To the contrary, he seems to relish in it, to be emboldened by it.

He drew big applause from the South Carolina GOP crowd during his latest sparring with a moderator at last night's debate when talking about food stamps and children working as a janitors, which some have perceived as having racial overtones.

Now, he's made an ad out of it. His campaign cut down his response to 30 seconds, added music, and played up the applause.

UDPATED AT 6:10 PM ET

SALEM, N.H. and NASHUA, N.H. -- If the battle for conservatives in this state is between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, then they’re doing it in very different ways -- both in style and setting.

“When people say, the GOP is for big business, I double over and laugh,” Santorum said before a couple hundred people at the Derry-Salem Elks Lodge. “We’re the party of the little guy.”

Contrast that with Gingrich’s event at the Nashua Country Club speaking before a more tony, blazer-and-tie crowd.

He touted his hand in developing “supply-side economic” theory before members of the Rotary Club of Nashua while facing windows that overlooked a golf course.

Santorum, donning his signature sweater vest and stonewashed jean, used no podium and spoke at length before taking questions. He answered just six in an hour-and-a-half because of his lengthy answers, which often meandered far from the central points of the questions.

Gingrich, wearing a dark suit and red tie -- accompanied by wife Callista in a formal suit -- spoke from a podium, but only for about five minutes. He then moved quickly from question to question in an event that lasted about half an hour.

Santorum struck populist chords with talk of manufacturing and textile mills. "We’re going to give small-town America the chance to come back," he said before deriding migration to big cities: “Our basic values will look more like Barack Obama" if it continues.

Gingrich stuck to generic talking points about “Saul Alinsky” radicalism and went deep into policy weeds during questions, rattling off one proposal after another.

Lots of undecided voters
At the Santorum event, voters were mostly split between Santorum and Gingrich. At Gingrich’s event, the vast majority of the half a dozen or so interviewed by First Read were actually for front-runner Mitt Romney. Romney often attracts a more buttoned-up, country club crowd.

Just one person at Gingrich's event said they were considering voting for Gingrich.

Shelly Sousa of Salem said she saw Gingrich Friday night, described him as “intelligent,” has “thought-out policies,” and understands “history.” But she likes Santorum’s “devotion to family.” She’s torn.

“I’m going to pray on it,” she said.

Kim Litman from Derry said she, too, was trying to decide between Gingrich and Santorum. “I was impressed,” she said of Santorum after his event. But “I’m concerned; does he have enough knowledge as Gingrich?”

Earl and Marsha Dunbar from Loudon said they, too, were trying to decide between Gingrich and Santorum, though Earl also said he was considering Jon Huntsman.

“He was so boring in the debates,” he said. “I want to see him in person.”

Earl said he saw a measure of hypocrisy in how Gingrich has complained about Super PACs.

“He says he’s not part of the PACs and then turns around and does it himself,” Earl said. “I see it as being two-faced and plastic.” 

Now, he’s leaning toward Santorum.

In Nashua, Mark Nash from Hudson said he’s voting for Gingrich.

“Newt’s a very aggressive guy,” he said. Of front-runner Mitt Romney, he echoed a point of New Hampshire pride.

“It bothered me that people in Massachusetts liked him,” Nash said with a wry smile. “He was a Massachusetts-type person. We don’t like people from Massachusetts. We try to make it a little more conservative here.”

But that wasn’t the prevailing opinion with the Rotary Club members.

Betty Hall, who’s lived and voted in New Hampshire since 1953, said she is voting for Romney and made that decision “a long time ago.” She cited that he’s a “business man,” he’s a “good manager,” and “hasn’t been in Washington” like other candidates.

Gloria Fields of Hudson echoed that.

“I made up my mind when he first announced he was running for president,” she said with a smile. “He’s a business man."

Robert Boisvert of Manchester said he's "50-50" between Romney and Gingrich. It's between who would be the "better candidate against Obama" and who is "closest to conservative values," he said.

He said he'll dive into notes and research tonight that he has been keeping.

"What I want," Boisvert said, "is for there to no longer be a Barack Obama."

WOLFEBORO,  N.H. -- Saturday evening is a big night for Newt Gingrich. Not only is it just three days before the New Hampshire primary, it also marks the first presidential debate since the barrage of negative attacks against the former House speaker in Iowa kicked into high gear.

“It’s fight night. We’re excited,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told a small group of reporters following a Gingrich event here.

Standing in front of a large military tank with a fighter jet hanging from above, Gingrich wasted no time before taking a jab at GOP rival Mitt Romney.

“I look at this tank lovingly because I remember Michael Dukakis,” he said as he started his speech inside The Wright Museum on WWII history. (Dukakis was the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, who was featured in a picture riding in a tank.) “And it’s just a reminder that governors of Massachusetts don’t always make good presidential candidates.”

Gingrich gave one of his most energetic speeches on the trail Saturday afternoon before a crowd of at least 400 people. And as a historian, the museum was an ideal setting for him. This impassioned townhall performance from the former Speaker comes has he is struggling in recent polls in New Hampshire and nationally. He has to finish strong here and win South Carolina to have a chance at becoming the Republican nominee.

“We have 2 weeks to clarify in South Carolina that he [Romney] is a Massachusetts Moderate and that he has a whole series of experiences and values that are the opposite of the South Carolina Republican Party,” Gingrich told reporters following his event in the same resort town as Romney’s summer home. “If we succeed in doing that he won’t win in South Carolina.  If we don’t succeed, he might win.” 

Debates have always been a strong suit for Gingrich but the last presidential debate was more than three weeks ago on Dec. 15 in Sioux City, Iowa. Since then, he has moved far from front-runner status, finishing just fourth in the Iowa caucuses earlier this week. Potential good news for the Gingrich campaign? Two debates in 12 hours this weekend.

Gingrich told reporters after one of his largest events since his poll numbers began to drop that he will prepare for this debate as he has all along.

“Drink a diet coke, call Maggie and Robert [his grandchildren] and get their sophisticated coaching advice,” he said, adding he will try to remember the tips of “slower, smile, shorter, clearer.”

Gingrich said not to doubt his strategy of not talking to paid consultants before debates as he has “two debate coaches with a winning streak.”

Even though it’s “fight night” for the campaign, Gingrich may not directly attack Romney – at least not by the way he defines going negative on an opponent.

“I'm not going to go after Mitt Romney. I may define the reality of a Reagan conservative and a Massachusetts moderate,” he said. “I don’t think telling the truth in a happy and pleasant way comes across as negative, it may come across as the truth … may have to ask Gov. Romney how he feels describing accurately his record.”

Richard Ellis / Getty Images file

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks to supporters on Friday in Columbia, South Carolina.

DES MOINES, Iowa – It appears Newt Gingrich isn’t playing nice anymore.

The Gingrich campaign is out with its first opposition email directly hitting none other than GOP rival Mitt Romney -- a move that signals a departure from the positive-only campaign Gingrich himself promised to run.

“Can we trust a Massachusetts Moderate to enact a conservative agenda?," Gingrich Communications Director Joe DeSantis writes in the email sent out Monday evening. "Our campaign might have plenty of things to say about that, but the best response certainly comes from Mitt Romney himself: 'I think people recognize that I am not a partisan Republican. That I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.'"

The email, labeled “FACT SHEET: MITT THE MASSACHUSETTS MODERATE,” makes fun of Romney’s new television ad running in Iowa during which the former Massachusetts Governor portrays himself as a "conservative businessman.” It quotes what people have said about Romney and a few things Romney has said in the past.

Ironically, the former House Speaker is currently running a TV ad in Iowa himself, during which he says: “Others seem to be more focused on attacks, rather than moving the country forward. That's up to them.” 

After completing examination of the nominating petitions filed by Newt Gingrich, the Virginia GOP determined that Gingrich submitted fewer than the 10,000 signatures required, the party said in a press release.

Gingrich has failed to qualify for the ballot and will not be included in the state's March 6 primary.