TALLAHASSEE - For nearly two weeks, Rudy Giuliani had Florida to himself and made the most of it. He barnstormed by bus and aired uncontested advertisements in most of the state's 10 television markets while other Republican candidates fought elsewhere.
But now Giuliani suddenly has plenty of competition.
After contests in South Carolina and Nevada, five GOP rivals have descended on Florida for a nine-day scrap before the state's critical Jan. 29 primary. After a deflating string of weak showings in earlier-voting states, Giuliani has been holed up in Florida, in what could be his last redoubt.
In a chaotic Republican campaign, Giuliani has bet his candidacy on the Sunshine State to catapult him into the 21-state blowout on Feb. 5 when nearly half the delegates to the party convention will be chosen. Victories have failed to provide definitive momentum for three opponents, but Giuliani hopes Florida can whip up a tail wind for his stalled candidacy.
"It's possible he could do it," said Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and a former four-term Republican representative from Pensacola. "But my question is how can a guy who hasn't broken out of single digits in [Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina] suddenly jump up to 25 percent and win Florida? It's going to be hard."
Giuliani built this box for himself with his highly unorthodox strategy of finessing six earlier states and loading up for bigger, delegate-laden states, starting with Florida, that weigh in later in the process and will be more receptive to his moderate social views.
So far, the news has been mostly bad, however, as his once-large leads in the national and Florida polls have vanished. Recent polls have him running fourth nationally and in a statistical four-way tie with John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee in Florida.
McCain's victory Saturday in South Carolina, the first Southern state to hold a primary, builds on his Jan. 8 win in New Hampshire and makes him an even more formidable foe for Giuliani in Florida and beyond.
Nevertheless, Florida affords a receptive environment for Giuliani's strong national security and tax-cutting messages.
There's a huge population of Northeastern transplants, many of them former New Yorkers, and active and retired military, along with a substantial Cuban-American population that Giuliani is campaigning hard to win with harsh anti-Castro rhetoric. Moreover, in a state with much anxiety about the economy and taxes, a statewide ballot question to cut property taxes is also on the Jan. 29 ballot.
Giuliani is going all-out to win.
"Rudy's getting good crowds, a lot of newspaper coverage, and he's invested the most money and has the best team doing absentee ballots," said George LeMieux, former campaign manager and chief of staff to Governor Charlie Crist, a first-term Republican who so far has not endorsed anyone in the presidential contest.
Typically, about 30 percent of Florida voters cast absentee or early ballots, LeMieux said. (Polls for the primary opened last Monday.) Chasing voters by phone or mail to get them in the bank before Jan. 29 is a key element of the Giuliani game plan.
Attorney General Bill McCollum, Giuliani's Florida chairman, said the campaign began organizing early in the state and is well positioned for the primary. "We've had all the machinery in place here, working the grass roots," said McCollum, a former 10-term congressman from the Orlando area.
Giuliani's Florida organization, which even rival campaigns acknowledge is the best in the state, now has a paid staff of about 70, up from about 15 a month ago, McCollum said.
Giuliani has "been hitting issues that are very important to Florida and the Florida economy without much competition from the other candidates," he said.
"With his emphasis on Florida-based issues, it's like he's running for governor of Florida or even mayor of whatever city he's in," said David Johnson, a consultant and former executive director of the Republican Party of Florida and unaligned in the presidential race.
Giuliani has endorsed a national catastrophe fund to guarantee high property-loss insurance policies, which insurers have been discontinuing in hurricane-ravaged Florida. In Jacksonville, he said he would try to steer the next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, to a home port in nearby Naval Station Mayport, to make up for the decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy.
Besides local themes, his retooled stump speech now focuses on cutting taxes, national defense, and fighting terrorism.
Giuliani's campaign events in Florida are crisper, newsier, and better-staged than those he held in Iowa or New Hampshire. They rarely pack emotion, but a poignant moment occurred on Tuesday as he addressed a crowd of more than 300 in front of the Duval County Veterans Memorial Wall in Jacksonville.
After extolling the surge efforts and urging "victory" in Iraq, Giuliani recognized the parents of three sons who were killed in Iraq and asked them to the podium to talk about the deaths.
A heckler interrupted, shouting: "Rudy is a baby killer. He supports the killing of innocent children." The abortion rights opponent, from a group shadowing Giuliani at different stops, was shooed away by police. Giuliani supports abortion rights.
The parents continued to speak and Giuliani - not a touchy-feely guy with strangers - embraced them.
Increasingly - at least five or six times per stop - Giuliani invokes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City when he was mayor. Sometimes, reminders of Sept. 11 come to Giuliani.
At a rally in New Smyrna Beach, on Florida's central Atlantic coast, Giuliani stood on a wooden chest in front of his campaign bus and spied Allan Hoehl, a retired three-star New York Police Department chief and Manhattan borough commander who was on duty the day of the attacks. "On Sept. 11, he was as he looks right there . . . a giant," Giuliani said, pointing to Hoehl, who at 6-foot-6 towered over the crowd of about 350 outside a strip mall.
The New Smyrna Beach event highlighted the illusory nature of Giuliani's Florida primary support in some of these crowds. Many are snowbirds from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut who remember Giuliani's accomplishments in New York and his leadership after the terrorist attacks.
"He did a wonderful job, and when he stepped in on 9/11, I don't think anyone could have done it better," said Anita Hastings, originally from Brooklyn and a Giuliani voter.
But a number of those in attendance said they are not Florida voters and spend only winters here. One was Lynn Parrott, a retired advertising executive from Nyack, N.Y., who twice shouted at Giuliani: "Thank you for cleaning up New York."
Giuliani's strength is in southeast Florida, but he is not limiting his geographic efforts.
"The Giuliani campaign called my home without knowing it," said Scarborough, asking his wife who she planned to vote for - she wouldn't say - and whether she needed a ride to the polls from her home in Pensacola.
"That's a pretty aggressive get-out-the-vote operation, two weeks out, almost Bush-like in identifying voters," Scarborough said. "That costs an awful lot of money, and it tells me Rudy Giuliani is going to have enough money to play in the state."
