By Thomas Burr

| The Salt Lake Tribune

From Des Moines to Manchester, from Charleston to Orlando, presidential candidate Mitt Romney has turned to Rep. Jason Chaffetz as a witness to his conservative credentials and support amongst the tea party members of Congress.

Now the Utah Republican congressman has put himself in the middle of the Florida fight between Romney and his chief rival, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

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Chaffetz, who has stumped for Romney in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and is currently on the trail in Florida, has been shadowing Gingrich at events — and offering rebuttals to Gingrich’s speeches — resulting in two confrontations between the congressman and Gingrich’s spokesman, R.C. Hammond.

On Friday, after spotting Chaffetz at the back of an event in Mount Dora, Fla., Hammond approached and started quizzing him on whether the congressman had lobbied for or owned stock in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the two quasi-governmental mortgage companies.

"Is this what you’re really doing?" Chaffetz responded to Hammond, who had joined the media scrum around the Utah Republican to ask questions, according to a video of the encounter. "I’m happy to answer questions from people with press credentials, but from the Gingrich campaign, probably not."

"OK," Hammond shot back, "so you don’t want to answer any of our questions?"

Hammond continued to question Chaffetz, who smirked at the rival spokesman.

"You guys sound a little desperate," Chaffetz said.

Romney has deployed a handful of surrogates along the campaign this year, including Chaffetz and Reps. Jeff Flake, Connie Mack, Mary Bono Mack and Rodney Alexander. The Romney camp said Chaffetz, one of few surrogates to travel to all of the primary contests, has been an "invaluable member" of its team.

"Rep. Chaffetz is an outstanding advocate for limited government and conservative principles," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Monday. "Not only does he understand the issues, he is a credible and influential voice."

Beyond campaign stops, Chaffetz has traveled on Romney’s press bus and spoke in his defense on conference calls with reporters. On Monday, Chaffetz called Gingrich an "unreliable conservative."

"In fact, I think he’s a convenient conservative," Chaffetz said on a call organized by the Romney camp. "The things we’re fighting for in this country to get us back to our financial path, I find, in many ways, Speaker Gingrich helped create the problem."

Gingrich’s campaign questions whether Chaffetz could find himself under fire from his own base for supporting Romney, whom the rival candidate has termed a "Massachusetts liberal."

"I am curious what kind of tea party backlash there will be for him politically because here he is going out and advocating for the establishment candidate, the liberal candidate," Hammond told The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday.

"This is where he’s staked his claim in a presidential primary when a lot of voters are looking for government to reduce its size. ... That’s not the side he’s standing on in the election."

While a majority of Utah Republicans support Romney — partly because of sharing his Mormon faith and his leadership of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City — Chaffetz’s backing of Romney does raise concerns among some conservative activists.

"Representative Chaffetz’s vocal and active support of Mitt Romney means that Chaffetz can and should be politically judged for what Romney himself has done — his positions, his beliefs, and his record," said Connor Boyack, director of the Utah Tenth Amendment Center and author of Latter-day Liberty. "In tying his anchor to Romney’s ship full of constitutional holes, Chaffetz has made himself quite vulnerable among the segment of his voter base which opposes Romney strongly for his advocacy of anti-liberty policies."