How appealing is Giuliani?

MANCHESTER, N.H.
RUDY GIULIANI got two different reactions when he came here to the Queen City on Saturday -- reactions that speak to the promise and peril confronting the man known as America's mayor as he mulls a presidential run.

"I'm leaning in his direction," said Richard Heitmiller of Nashua, a retired chief executive. "What impressed me was what he did with the city of New York."

"Rudy is a very capable man," added Vivian Desmarais, a former state representative from Manchester. "He's a doer."

But other Republicans gathered at the Palace Theatre for the state party's annual meeting sounded a different tone.

"I won't vote for him," declared Madelene Moffett of Rochester, a retired secretary. "I want to keep life" -- a pro life position, that is -- "in the Republican Party."

For Republicans, Giuliani is a figure out of comfortable ideological register. Admired both for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and for his longer record as Gotham's combative, effective chief executive, the thrice-married former mayor is viewed skeptically by conservatives because of his support for abortion rights, civil unions, and gun control.

But he has considerable appeal to independents and Democrats.

"He has the ability to be one of our strongest general election candidates," says David Carney, a former adviser to George H.W. Bush and now a GOP consultant in New Hampshire.

As a Republican with appeal beyond his party, and as the first serious Italian-American presidential candidate ever, Giuliani could make usually dependable Democratic states competitive. (A Quinnipiac University poll shows him beating Hillary Clinton in New Jersey.)

One question, notes Lee Maringoff, director of the Marist Poll, is whether Giuliani's crossover appeal can survive the Republican primaries. Or, put another way, whether Giuliani can survive the GOP nominating process with his current positions intact.

So far, the former mayor has taken a different approach than other hopefuls. Mitt Romney, for example, has retrofitted his stands to make himself attractive to conservatives, but only at the cost of accusations of expediency.

Giuliani "is the kind of guy who sticks to his guns," says Paul Cellucci, who is backing him over Romney, his fellow former Bay State governor.

Certainly Giuliani's camp seems to realize that serial flip-flopping would mar his scrappy authenticity. Leaving the troublesome matters unmentioned, Giuliani told New Hampshire Republicans that you can't expect 100 percent agreement on the issues.

"All of us have disagreements with candidates about this or that," he said.

Some Republicans think Giuliani's leadership after the attacks and his toughness could trump other concerns.

"I think that doesn't matter in the case of Giuliani," says former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who backs Romney. "I have been with Rudy in a number of states -- they include the South and the Midwest -- where you go into a restaurant and everyone would stand and cheer."

On Saturday, they stood and clapped, even though Giuliani's half-hour address seemed more like a cut-and-paste pastiche of a business-convention motivational speech than it did a pitch from a presidential hopeful sure of his footing. Nor did his discussion of the war in Iraq move beyond boilerplate to display any real foreign policy depth.

Afterward, Giuliani, who has just announced a New Hampshire chairman and who is staffing up his exploratory effort in a serious way, sounded like a man who wants to run -- but who also wants to be assured of doing well before he announces.

He was encountering "a tremendous amount of enthusiasm . . . a lot of people encouraging you," he told reporters -- but then again, he allowed, those who don't want him to run "kind of stay away."

As for a timetable? "The timetable is, when's the right time and when do you have the confidence," he said. "Most of it is about Judith and I deciding that there's a really unique contribution that we can make."

Most of the Granite State Republicans I interviewed seemed willing to listen -- but they were a long way from sold. After his speech, Paul Mirski, an Enfield conservative, cited his deep disagreement with Giuliani, particularly on gun control, but conceded: "I have to tell you, he is pretty impressive. For social conservatives, it is a problem."

And that's probably the best Giuliani can expect at this point. Republican conservatives aren't going to greet him with open arms. Still, some are at least willing to lend him an ear.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.