Mitt Romney: Republicans nominate former Massachusetts governor as their candidate for president

The symbolic beginning of the final stretch of the presidential campaign is underway: convention season.

Republicans spent their first full day of their convention in Tampa hammering President Obama on the economy.

Glonda Mooney is a delegate from Texas and is in charge of hiring for a bail-bonds company.

She says the doctors and lawyers applying for jobs at her company are signs that droves of white collar workers are out of work.

"Applicants are willing to take jobs that pay ten, eleven dollars an hour and no benefits," said Mooney.

Her theory fits the Romney campaign's message of the day, that President Obama hasn't gotten people back to work.

To further emphasize their point, they're running a debt clock over the convention floor.

"That clock moves at 41 thousand, 41 thousand dollars a second," said Blaise Ingoglia, the vice-chair of the Florida GOP.

Republicans insist the debt clock would be moving less-quickly under a President Romney, that fewer regulations and lower taxes would lead to more hiring and more government revenue.

But this is politics.

A mile from the convention hall, Democrats held a press conference in hopes of turning Romney's economic argument upside down.

"He bought my plant in 1994 through his Bain Capital," said Randy Johnson, put forth by Democrats to lead the case against Romney.

He worked on the assembly line at AmPad, a paper supply company in Pennsylvania.

He says Bain venture capitalists cut his salary by a quarter and stripped his benefits.

"He believed that creating wealth was creating jobs, a by-product, as he calls it. That's not the case," said Johnson.

There is struggle for the spotlight at this convention.

Along with Hurricane Isaac, there's also Ron Paul and his supporters.

Delegates supporting candidate Ron Paul want him to speak at the convention and to have delegates he won during the primary recognized during the convention.

They say the Romney campaign is making an effort to stop that.

When Paul appeared on the floor to, "visit some friends," his supporters started chanting, going back and forth with many delegates supporting Romney.

Tuesday night's primetime speakers will be Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Ann Romney, the candidate's wife.

But hours before they were scheduled to speak Republicans Mitt Romney for president, culminating a long primary fight and setting the stage for a close contest against President Barack Obama.

In a roll call of states Tuesday, New Jersey put Romney over the top, giving him the prize that eluded him four years ago. Romney is scheduled to accept his party's nomination in a speech Thursday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.