Orlando, Fla. — Speaking to delegates slated to vote in today’s straw poll at a breakfast he sponsored, Rick Perry took care to emphasize Florida’s importance to his campaign.

“It’s great to be in the state that picks presidents,” he said to the approximately 1,100 delegates assembled in the three-quarters full ballroom.

Perry jokily spoke about how “a little notoriety” in Florida (“I think you call it hanging chads”) had impacted his hopes in 2000. “For about a month and half, my hopes of being governor of the state of Texas were kind of in the balance,” he said, extending out his arms, bent at the elbows, and shifting his shoulders to imitate a shifting balance. “Here we are, 11 years later, and I got all my hopes on Florida again,” he observed, flanked on stage by U.S. and Florida state flags.

Perry didn’t mention Romney by name, nor did he repeat his line about Americans not looking for the “smoothest debater,” but he did argue that the nation wasn’t looking for the “slickest candidate.”

“You see what happens when our country chooses leaders who emphasize words over deeds. We get a president like we have today,” Perry said.

Another jab at Mitt Romney was Perry’s remark that some campaigns had “spurned” the Presidency 5 straw poll. Those campaigns include Romney’s, which announced earlier this year that they would participate in no straw polls.

Perry appeared tired during the speech, stumbling over his words a couple of times. Before the speech, as he signed a baseball cap and at least one copy of Fed Up! and shook hands for about an hour, Perry was friendly, but seemed worn-out and lacking his usual feistiness.

Perry’s campaign has aggressively campaigned for a win at today’s straw poll. In addition to hosting the delegates for breakfast, the campaign sent out direct mail and assembled a leadership team. A delegate told me that he had been called twice by the Perry campaign, first asking him what he thought of Perry and second, polling him about his choice for the straw poll.

The straw poll, held previously in 1979, 1987, and 1995, so far has a perfect track record: every winner (Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole) has gone on to win the GOP nomination.