Rudy Giuliani sounded like someone who was dropping out of the Republican race after a poor showing in Florida.
He thanked all of his opponents in an Orlando speech and talked about the race in the past tense.
The Associated Press reported that he was in discussions with the McCain campaign to give his endorcement.
Girding for battle as the rest of the GOP field descended upon Florida, Rudy Giuliani challenged them for the first time by name.
"Do they agree that you should have a national catastrophic fund?" he said in a Saturday tour of the Everglades. "I support it -- I was the first one to support it. Now let's find out where the others -- John McCain and Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson -- let's see what their position is on this."
For weeks, the former New York mayor has had this state to himself, having pulled out of the early primaries to focus time and cash on Florida's 57 delegates. While others rallied late votes in South Carolina, he attended a round table about Florida's space industry and toured the Everglades.
But it has cost Giuliani -- in raw delegate counts and lost news cycles to those men who did contend the six Republican primaries so far. Giuliani finally won his first delegate Saturday, in Nevada. But he is behind even long-shot Ron Paul in that department, after Paul picked up four out West.
Stretching to stay relevant, Giuliani went on the attack and called two big allies to his side.
Actor Jon Voight and former FBI director Louis Freeh, Giuliani's homeland security adviser and Delaware campaign chair, introduced him at a rally in the central Florida retirement community The Villages.
Both Voight and Giuliani acknowledged he'd have to win Florida to stand a chance.
"I know there is no second place," Voight said. "I know this has to happen, and Florida's got to do it. This is a very important election; it's the most important in my lifetime."
Giuliani has been challenging the other candidates to come on down, and now they will. Ten days remain before Florida's Jan. 29 primary, the longest gap between votes since the nomination process began.
"We're waiting for you," Giuliani said. "We're waiting for you with a campaign we've been working on for I think almost a year."
The Republican used one of his last chances with an undivided spotlight to ally himself with President Bush in a swipe at opponents.
"I supported the Bush tax cuts. John McCain voted with the Democrats against the Bush tax cuts and Mitt Romney was equivocal in his support," Giuliani said.
Earlier, Giuliani addressed a few hundred outside a Broward County library in South Florida, one of several early voting locations.
At the end of the rally, Giuliani started to chant: "Let's go vote! Let's go vote!"
A handful of people made their way inside, voter registration cards in hand.
In a week and a half, he'll find out if it was enough.
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Associated Press Writer Rasha Madkour contributed to this report from Coral Springs and the Everglades.
With his plan for winning the GOP presidential nomination riding largely on a Florida victory at the end of the month, Rudy Giuliani asked an evangelical congregation for prayers instead of votes Sunday and quoted scripture to evoke a message of hope and perseverance.
"I'm not coming here to ask for your vote," he said. "That's up to you and it's not the right place. But I am coming here to ask you for something very special and more important: I'm asking for your prayers."
While other Republican candidates are focused on Tuesday's Michigan primary, Giuliani is following a strategy of pushing for a Jan. 29 victory in Florida he hopes will propel him toward a dominant showing on Feb. 5, when more than 20 states hold primaries and caucuses, and then on to the nomination.
Once a strong front-runner in national polls, the former New York City mayor has fallen well behind the three candidates jockeying for a victory in Michigan, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
"I've faced odds that were at times seemingly impossible, situations where people had given up hope, but we didn't listen to the doubters, we didn't listen to the naysayers," Giuliani told several thousand worshippers at El Rey Jesus church in Miami.
"Fear not, be strong, and of good courage," he added, quoting the Bible. The church, with has a congregation of 10,000 people, was his first stop on a three-day bus tour through Florida.
After church Sunday, the candidate did remind crowds at some later stops about early voting, which starts Monday. His campaign has been putting an extra focus on voter outreach for the early balloting.
Giuliani's Florida bus tour -- expected to cover nearly 700 miles by the end of the day Tuesday -- comes on the heels of word last week that a dozen senior staffers are giving up their paychecks this month, which some have read as a sign that the one-time front-runner is struggling with a cash shortage.
Giuliani and his aides, however, have dismissed suggestions the campaign is running into money trouble.
"We're in good shape," he told reporters Sunday. "We really are. The reality is we have enough money to get through this." He said the people forgoing their pay "did that out of an excess of generosity but it really wasn't necessary."
He said that unlike some other candidates, notably Romney, he has not put any of his own money into his campaign.
"I never have," he said. "I believe that the way you run for office is you raise money and you've got to raise money among the people and you've got to have their support in order to run."
In an interview Sunday on Fox News, Giuliani was pressed about whether his campaign has been steadily retreating from early primary states like Michigan and South Carolina, where he once said he would compete and has now pulled back, Giuliani said the strategy has been to adjust.
"The reality is as these primaries played out, certain people were very strong in some, and you had to look for the opportunity where you had the best chance to demonstrate your strength," he said. "And it turned out that the analysis was that Florida was the best place for us to do it."
As Giuliani boarded a firetruck Sunday to ride in a Three Kings parade in Little Havana, some Miami-Dade County firefighters were protesting the decision by their union leaders to put him in a truck with the union name on the side.
Parade-goers along the two-mile route both cheered and booed the former mayor.
About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are forgoing their January paychecks, aides said Friday, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate.
"We have enough money, but we could always use more money," contended Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. "We want to make sure we have enough to win."
At the end of December, he said the campaign had $11.5 million cash on hand, $7 million of which can be used for the primary. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped campaign, and said Giuliani continues to bring in cash; several fundraisers are scheduled this week in Florida.
DuHaime and other aides stressed that relinquishing pay was voluntary and was limited to senior staffers.
"I want to do everything I can to make sure Rudy's president, and I speak for a lot of the campaign when I say that," DuHaime said. "None of us joined this campaign for money."
Still, the move raises questions about whether Giuliani's bank account is as flush as he needs it to be to cobble together wins in enough states to secure the party nod.
The former New York mayor has yet to win a contest and is counting on a victory in delegate-rich Florida to prove his candidacy is viable heading into the multistate contests slated for Feb. 5, where he believes he can prevail in states like California and Illinois.
It's a costly strategy because Florida and states that follow it are home to some of the most expensive media markets in the country. With so many states voting in such a narrow time period, candidates can do little else but rely on paid media to get their message out.
Republican strategists estimate that it will cost roughly $35 million to run heavy levels of ads in the two dozen states that hold contests on Feb. 5.
All Republican candidates have struggled to raise money for the 2008 presidential race, an indication that GOP donors aren't as energized as Democrats.
Giuliani, for his part, poured several million dollars into advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire, only to come in far behind his opponents. He has been spending millions of dollars over the past month to run TV ads in Florida.
Republican Rudy Giuliani didn't wait to hear how badly he fared in New Hampshire before pressing onward to what he hopes will be friendlier territory.
The former New York mayor quickly thanked his supporters Tuesday night then left for Florida, one of the delegate-rich states central to his risky strategy that put little stock in the traditional roles of Iowa and New Hampshire.
"This is just the beginning. Think of it as the kickoff in what's going to be a very long and very tough game," Giuliani told about 100 supporters in a hotel ballroom. "By the time it's over with, by February 5th, it's going to be clear that we're the nominee of the party."
Mike Huckabee won Iowa; Sen. John McCain of Arizona prevailed in New Hampshire. Giuliani was in a close race with Texas Rep. Ron Paul for fourth place in New Hampshire, but he insisted he was leaving the state with renewed vigor.
Though he all but ignored Iowa, Giuliani invested a fair amount in New Hampshire, with a cluster of visits in the fall and $2.5 million in advertising. At the same time, his underlying strategy has been to focus on later voting states, particularly delegate-rich states like California and Florida.
His support in New Hampshire peaked last spring, just as John McCain's campaign was heading into a serious decline. But in later months McCain's gain appeared to come at Giuliani's expense.
Betting that the field will remain fractured heading into Florida's Jan. 29 contest, the campaign hopes a win there will begin a streak that will carry him through some two dozens states that vote Feb. 5. But he also could become irrelevant if he is eclipsed by the attention paid to the winners of the earlier contests.
So focused was Giuliani on what comes next that he no sooner had thanked his supporters than he asked them to pack their bags.
"We're going to leave in a few minutes for Florida to fight it out there, and I want you to come join us there and help us," he said. "And help us in Connecticut. Help us in New York. Help us in New Jersey."
He said the race remained wide open.
"There's going to be a lot more ups and downs to it, and one thing we can handle is ups and downs. That's what it means to handle a crisis," said Giuliani, who has made his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks a central theme of his campaign.
Giuliani left New Hampshire before learning of McCain's win. He said he would call the winner later Tuesday.
Rudy Giuliani was content to sit back and watch his two chief rivals criticize each other Sunday, just two days before voters in New Hampshire cast the first primary ballots of the campaign.
Giuliani, who badly trails his rivals in recent polling, refused to level criticism of rivals John McCain or Mitt Romney and came to their defense. Such a soft touch is a counter to how Romney and McCain have engaged in fierce comparisons during the campaign's final days here in New Hampshire.
"I have, as I do with Mitt, I have great respect for John McCain. And in fact John is a personal friend so this campaign for me is not against John McCain or against anyone else," Giuliani told C-SPAN after a house party here in Hollis.
He declined to even say he was running against them. Talking with reporters in Nashua, he said he could see his rivals "running with me."
So as McCain and Romney scuffle, Giuliani has stayed back and let them bloody each other.
"I have great respect for Mitt Romney. I campaigned for Mitt Romney when he ran for governor. I consider him a friend. I think he's accomplished a great deal in business. He's accomplished a great deal as a governor," said Giuliani, who on Sunday picked up the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association in Nashua.
But at his Hollis house party, one voter asked him about his Cabinet's make up. He said such predictions would be presumptuous, but added: "The Cabinet would look like last night's debate -- with one exception."
He didn't specify which rival -- Romney or Texas Rep. Ron Paul -- from his Cabinet, he joked in Nashua with reporters: "I think you know who I was talking about. Come on. That was pretty obvious."
He declined to predict a finish with reporters, saying he would do "the very best I can do. I'm not a handicapper. Every time I try to do that with horses, it doesn't work well. ... Let's see what the results are on Tuesday."
He also declined to explain why he has spent so much time in New Hampshire and yet isn't doing better in the polls.
"My candidacy is an unconventional candidacy. I mean, from the day I started, I was the candidate that couldn't get nominated. The Republican Party wouldn't nominate me. I don't know how often I read those stories back a year ago."
Giuliani has little hope of winning New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. Recent polls of likely primary voters place him at a distant third -- or worse -- behind McCain and Romney.
Giuliani's campaign has long said it would focus on a strategy that begins in Florida and explodes on Feb. 5, when more than 20 states vote. Giuliani has said the early states lack delegates and don't guarantee a nomination.
He dismissed criticism from Romney for the strategy.
"Mitt has his own struggle. These elections, they go up and down. We're all in a different position at different times. ... The reality is that we sit in a pretty good spot. We're ahead in something like 16 or 18 of the primaries coming up. ... His strategy had been to emphasize two states. Our strategy has been to give a proportionate emphasis to a number of states. Nobody knows if his strategy is going to work. At this point, our strategy looks like it has a good chance of working."
He told a C-SPAN caller that the criticism is part of the campaign.
"If you're asking me if governor Romney is a very qualified person and a person that I admire, the answer to that is yes. Does that mean we don't occasionally criticize each other in the heat of a campaign, of course, I mean that happens," he said. "But I think what you will find is that these Republican candidates have far more that we agree about than we disagree about."
He later pointed to Saturday's night debate when the Republican and Democratic candidates shared a stage.
"Everyone talks about returning civility to politics. I think that was more symbolic -- let's say, that was even more than symbolic. I thought that was a very nice thing. ... Everyone got to shake hands. Even just on an emotional level, it gives you a sense that you do share something in common, even if you have big disagreements over taxes, Iraq, other things. We're all sharing in common this desire to try and serve America, to try and help America. We all think we can do it best. We respect other people who go through what we went through what we go through."
Republican Rudy Giuliani defended his plan to expand the U.S. military Thursday, telling skeptical voters that he could do so while keeping government spending in check.
Several workers at Segway Inc. questioned the former New York mayor about his plan to add 10 new brigades to the Army and provide more equipment and weapons to other branches of the military.
After listening to Giuliani's stump speech in which he heavily emphasizes his commitment to lowering taxes, Marie Yanish asked him to "speak a little bit about the apparent conflict between lowering taxes and increasing the military budget."
Giuliani told her he would find taxes that would produce more revenue at lower rates. He said that strategy worked when he was mayor because he knew how to analyze a situation and take risks.
"One's not a tradeoff for the other," he said.
Another voter asked Giuliani what spending he would cut to make up for the increase in the military budget. He explained his plan to trim the federal workforce by not replacing workers who retire and to ask most federal agencies to scale back their budgets.
"It's essentially the same model I followed as mayor of New York City. I increased police, because we had a big crime problem. So I would increase the military, because we have a problem of terrorist threats," he said. "I also increased teachers ... but I reduced everything else."
Giuliani returned to his lower taxes theme when Bill Bleem, Segway's information technology director, asked Giuliani how he would get members of Congress to work with each other and the president.
"On the things where you really have to get things done and you don't have a majority, the only way the president can do it is go to the American people and get the American people on your side," he said. "Get the American people to believe that we need to lower taxes. Get them to understand that tax reduction is not about helping the rich. Tax reduction is about helping the growth of the entire economy."
Bleem wasn't impressed with the answer. He said he has voted for Republicans in the last two elections but probably will vote for a Democrat this time.
"He ducked it," he said. "We need a president who can pull (Congress) together or he accomplishes nothing."
Giuliani, who was heading to Florida later Thursday, said he didn't regret his decision to largely skip the Iowa caucus.
"The reason for it is we see this as a different kind of election. We've never had 29 primary and caucuses in one month," he told reporters. "This is extraordinary. Something different is going to win this election. We hope it's our different strategy that wins it. And we're confident it will."
Asked about polls that show his support dropping in New Hampshire, Giuliani said he is in good shape considering the amount of money Romney has spent there and the amount of time McCain has spent.
"Given our proportionate approach ... I think we're doing pretty well and I think in these last few days we're going to see a strong finish."
As Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney started a three-day, 17-stop blitz through Iowa before tomorrow's pivotal nominating caucuses, rivals Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul took time off from campaigning.
The United States need a larger military and better care for those who have served, Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday.
Flanked by veterans, Giuliani said wars in Iraq and Afghanistan underscored the need for more troops. Giuliani said any buildup should be done with volunteers, not a draft.
The former New York mayor's remarks came during his first public event on a three day tour of Florida. He conducted a private discussion with about a dozen veterans at the American Legion Post No. 119.
"You're my heroes," he said, telling the group the U.S. needed to take better care of its veterans to encourage more people to enlist.
Wednesday's appearance along Florida's Gulf coast is part of Giuliani's strategy to put less emphasis on voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and instead focus his campaign on other states. Florida moved up its presidential primary to Jan. 29, placing its election between earlier primaries and Super Tuesday, when 20 states vote.
"If you win Florida, it says something about your ability to win the general election," Giuliani said.
His current trip, with stops Thursday and Friday in South Florida and Orlando, includes talks with veterans groups. There were an estimated 1.8 million vets living in Florida in 2006.
Giuliani said the Army needs 10 more brigades and the Marine Corps' ranks should be increased to 200,000. He added that the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard need similar buildups.
Giuliani's remarks resonated with Frank Patti, 68, who served in Germany during the Cold War.
"We definitely need it," the former Brooklyn resident said. "It's a dangerous world."
He moved to Venice in southwest Florida about two years ago, he said.
Patti was still living in New York during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, an event that brought Giuliani widespread prominence.
Giuliani said he doubted the mettle of the current generations of Americans, wondering if they could live up to the standard of those who fought, and won, World War II and the Cold War. He said those doubts were dashed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He compared the iconic picture of firefighters raising a U.S. Flag at the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers to the image of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima while fighting the Japanese in 1945.
Several of the veterans clapped.
Giuliani also told reporters that he was rested and healthy after being briefly hospitalized last week with what he has said was a severe headache. He said a statement from his doctor is forthcoming.
He said he didn't think that it mattered which Democrat won that party's nomination, saying they all had agendas that included tax increases and more government-provided health services, which he derisively called "socialized medicine."
He also denied that while in Florida, he was shopping for a vice presidential candidate, namely Gov. Charlie Crist.
"I think he'll be on just about everyone's list," Giuliani said. But, he quickly added that such talk was premature.
--AP
Rudy Giuliani read a beloved Christmas story to youngsters in Harlem on Monday and reiterated that he was in good health, with no recurrence of cancer.
"I'm perfectly healthy. I don't have cancer," Giuliani told reporters after his annual reading of "A Visit From St. Nicholas"at New York's Hale House, a residence for needy children.
Giuliani, who had prostate cancer seven years ago, was hospitalized last week in St. Louis after suffering what he described as a headache so severe his campaign plane turned backless than 10 minutes after takeoff.
The former New York mayor canceled some events but was back campaigning in New Hampshire over the weekend, where he told reporters he had been tested and given a clean bill of health.
In response to renewed questions Monday, Giuliani told reporters his PSA level was measured just three weeks ago and was "zero or negligible." High PSA levels can mean cancer. He said his doctor would issue a full report soon.
Giuliani has read the Christmas story -- better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas" -- to children at the Hale House for 12 years. He promised that if he's elected president, he would still return to read the Clement Clarke Moore classic.
--AP
