BY OLYMPIA MEOLA

Gov. Bob McDonnell will leave this evening for Florida, where he’ll attend a rally for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

He and his daughter Jeanine McDonnell, who served in the Army as a leader of a satellite platoon in the Signal Corps in Iraq, will attend a veterans rally around 8:45 a.m. in Pensacola.

The governor will return to Virginia after the rally on Saturday to address the 25th Commemorative Session of the Virginia General Assembly in Williamsburg.