Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, once the Republican presidential front-runner thanks to his status as "America's Mayor," suffered a debilitating defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary. He prepared Wednesday to quit the race and endorse his friendliest rival, John McCain.
John McCain and Mitt Romney are battling for
Michigan, while Rudy Giuliani is sticking to his plan of putting all
his eggs in one basket: Florida. Trouble is, he has lost ground there;
a new poll shows Giuliani, Romney and McCain is a statistical dead heat
in the Sunshine State.
WATCH THE REPORT
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani praised rival Mike Huckabee for his win in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday -- a contest Giuliani skipped -- yet insisted his own early-state campaign could win over the long haul.
"I think we're in good shape. We're ahead in maybe 16, 18 of the 29 states that are coming up," the former New York mayor said. "This was the first one. I think it's one that, quite honestly, we didn't expect that we would win. And we didn't put a lot of resources into it. And now we'll move on to the others."
Giuliani holds an early lead in polls in Florida, which conducts its primary Jan. 29, and he hopes a strong showing here will offset poor results in early-voting states.
He said he thinks his early-state strategy will pay off "in that we've paid a lot of attention to states that some other candidates haven't paid much attention to."
"I think our message of being on offense against terrorism, having been tested by crisis, how to handle difficult problems, I think that message will succeed in a number of these primaries," he said.
"I congratulate Mike. I think he's got a really good victory there" in Iowa, Giuliani added.
He was interviewed on MSNBC and CNN.
Earlier, Giuliani spoke to a rally of mostly Cuban-Americans, asking them for their help, votes and support on Jan. 29, in the tradition of another election that turned on the Sunshine State.
"I know how good you are at that because I've seen you pull us through," Giuliani said. "Remember, it's Florida that saved this country for the Republican Party in 2000."
Giuliani is counting on winning the delegate-rich Sunshine State to offset poor showings in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Rivals Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain are focusing on those traditional states.
However, experts have questioned whether Giuliani's campaign can survive a series of early losses, as well as Florida's influence in the nomination process.
The Republican winner in Florida will get fewer delegates to the nominating convention because the state broke national party rules by holding the primary before Feb. 5.
Asked after the rally about his unconventional approach to the nomination, Giuliani said: "Everybody has their own strategy."
"We think this is the one that fits," he added.
Giuliani made no mention of his Republican competition during the rally, which a few hundred people attended. He did, however, take a shots at Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband's administration.
Referring to her as the leading Democratic candidate, Giuliani paraphrased her approach to taxes like this: "We have to take things from you for the better good."
The crowd booed.
"I have a different philosophy," Giuliani said. "I want to give some things back to you for the common good."
Touting the anti-terrorism theme that defines his campaign, he called for increasing the size of the armed forces, saying the "terrorists' war on us" should be approached from a position of strength.
"We have to be on the offense," Giuliani said. "No defense. We have to be on the offense."
Giuliani, who leads in polls among Floridians, said the Cuban-American community was an example for what good can come of transitioning to a democratic society.
"Look at what you've achieved in such a short period of time. Look what freedom can do," Giuliani said. "The same thing can happen in the Middle East."
--Associated Press
A Harvard study looked at young voters in both parties. Democrats are backing Obama while Republicans are leaning towards Giuliani.
MANALAPAN, N.J. (AP) -- The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination campaigned in New Jersey on Thursday -- primarily for candidates other than himself.
Rudy Giuliani attended a political rally for Jennifer Beck, a Republican assemblywoman who has waged a fierce battle for state Senate against a Democratic incumbent. He also campaigned for the Republican slate of Assembly candidates in Monmouth County's 12th District.
"You've got great candidates -- they're being outspent and they're ahead," Giuliani said of Beck and her running mates, Caroline Casagrande and Declan O'Scanlon.
Speaking to a partisan crowd of about 200 people at a catering facility off Route 9, Giuliani said, "As soon as they win, we'll be back here and we'll be working on February and November, and we're going to have three victories in a row."
Giuliani spoke for 20 minutes, much of the time talking up the 12th District Republicans and his own White House run. He stressed traditional Republican themes of reducing the size of government and growing the economy by reducing taxes.
He talked about his tenure as mayor of New York City, where he said he boosted the economy by lowering taxes, cutting spending and reducing government regulations.
"We didn't do it by raising taxes, we did it the American way," Giuliani told the crowd, who greeted his words with rousing applause. "The way it works in America, you lower taxes, you restrain government spending and you have pro-business policies. Then, first hundreds of people go to work, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands. And they earn so much money you actually make more money by having lower taxes than higher taxes."
Giuliani also attended two private fundraisers to benefit his own presidential bid during his visit to the Garden State.
Though he maintains a comfortable lead over fellow Republican presidential hopefuls in New Jersey polls, a moderate Giuliani is continuing to get pushback from conservative Republicans.
A new poll found more than half of white evangelical Republicans would consider voting for a conservative third-party candidate should the 2008 presidential race have Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton against Giuliani.
The survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, released Wednesday, found evangelicals unhappy with Giuliani's views on such issues as abortion, homosexuality and guns.
None of that was evident in Monmouth County on Thursday, where Giuliani urged the crowd to work hard to ensure victories Tuesday for Beck and her running mates.
"We will," responded a voice from the front row -- Beck's mother, who had come to town for Thursday's rally.
Beck, a first-term assemblywoman, is engaged in the state's most competitive -- and most expensive -- legislative race.
She is running against Sen. Ellen Karcher, the daughter of a former state Assembly speaker with solid financial backing from her party.
Karcher has received $1.72 million from the fund controlled by Democratic Senate President Richard J. Codey and $223,000 from the state Democratic Party, according to reports released by the Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Karcher has raised more money than any other state candidate, the reports show. She has raised $2.1 million and spent most of it, while Beck has raised about $333,000 and spent about $284,000.
The district's GOP Assembly candidates -- O'Scanlon and Casagrande -- are facing off against incumbent Democrat Michael Panter and Amy Mallet.
Speaking before Giuliani, Casagrande said it's fitting that the presidential hopeful was in New Jersey five days before the Nov. 6 election.
"He's good at cleaning up messes -- boy, do we have mess in Trenton," she said.
The 12th District lies mostly within Monmouth County, with a small part in Mercer. While Republicans held the majority of local elected offices and controlled all three legislative seats until the 2003 election, Democrats swept the legislative races that year, defeating three GOP incumbents.
In 2005, Republican challenger Beck won and Panter held on to his seat, defeating O'Scanlon by 65 votes.
Arizona Sen. John McCain says Republican rival Rudy Giuliani is deservedly popular because of his efforts on 9/11, but that it will take more than that to defeat Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and win the presidency.
McCain attributed Giuliani's standing atop the GOP field to the fact that he is so recognized from Sept. 11, 2001.
"I think because he is deservedly a popular individual who was -- his performance after 9/11 was very excellent, and he rallied the country," McCain said, adding that he had praised McCain's performance and even accompanied him to the World Series when the Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the Yankees.
But McCain, without naming Giuliani, expressed doubt that a candidate with his views would become the GOP nominee. McCain contended the former New York mayor is out of step with the party's conservative wing because he supports abortion and gay rights and gun control.
"I'm hoping that whoever is the nominee of our party, that we will support that nominee," McCain said on ABC's "This Week." "But it's hard for me to imagine that someone who holds the views on some of these issues and a record of it, would be at the end of the day the nominee of the party."
McCain emphasized his "consistent, conservative, reliable record" and said he is the most likely to be able to defeat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in a general election.
About his own campaign, which at one point had appeared doomed, McCain dismissed talk that he doesn't have enough money to stay competitive.
"I have never won a campaign on money," he said, pointing to his defeat of President Bush in the New Hampshire primary in 2000 despite being outspent.
McCain praised that state and Iowa for being places where voters insist on getting up close and personal with the candidates.
"It's good for America, but it's also very good for my campaign. And I see increased enthusiasm," he said. "I see increasing support, and I think we're going to do very well. And whatever we do, I think we'll have enough money to be competitive."
(AP) -- Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson swipes at GOP rival Rudy Giuliani in a speech he plans to give Monday night on the former New York mayor's home turf.
"Some think the way to beat the Democrats in November is to be more like them. I could not disagree more," the one-time Tennessee senator says in remarks he is to deliver before the Conservative Party of New York.
"I believe that conservatives beat liberals only when we challenge their outdated positions, not embrace them. This is not a time for philosophical flexibility, it is a time to stand up for what we believe in," Thompson adds.
He doesn't mention Giuliani's name in excerpts made available to The Associated Press, but he's clearly trying to draw a contrast with the rival who's leading in national Republican polls.
Giuliani was once a Democrat. Unlike Thompson, the New Yorker backs abortion rights and gay rights. And, the ex-mayor's central argument for Republicans to nominate him is that he gives them the most likely shot to win in the general election.
With voting beginning in under three months, Thompson is trying to win the support of conservatives who are pivotal in GOP primaries.
"With me, what you see is what you get. I was a proud conservative yesterday, I remain one today, and I will be one tomorrow," Thompson says.
He touts his eight-year Senate tenure and boasts of working to further the conservative causes of smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation and conservative judges.
In fact, while he was seen as a reliably conservative vote in the Senate, he sometimes strayed from the party line and focused more on investigating than legislating.
Conversely, Giuliani voted for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972. As a Republican mayor, he broke from the GOP and endorsed Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo in an unsuccessful race for a fourth term. In his own two terms as mayor, Giuliani staunchly supported abortion rights, gay rights and gun control -- and also was left-of-center on a host of other issues.
He also has had a rocky history with the Conservative Party of New York.
In his first mayoral race in 1989, Giuliani ran as a Republican but sought and won the Liberal Party's endorsement, too. He lost but ran again in 1993, that time winning with the Liberal Party's backing.
Thompson's address to the Conservative Party will be his first public event since participating in his first presidential debate in Michigan last Tuesday. He was scheduled to be in New Hampshire late last week for a fundraising breakfast for Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, but he canceled his trip. Aides say he also plans stops this week in Washington, Georgia and Florida.
By AMY LORENTZEN
Associated Press Writer
