Rudy Giuliani, who spent much of last year as the frontunner in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination, finished a distant third tonight in Florida, and strongly hinted that he would withdraw from the campaign.
Addressing supporters here last night, Giuliani spoke of his campaign in the past tense: "I'm proud we stayed positive," he said. "You don't always win, but you can do it right." Giuliani's aides declined to comment on news reports that he would endorse Senator John McCain, who narrowly beat Mitt Romney in the Florida race.
Hoping that Florida, sometimes called "the sixth borough," would provide the lifeline to rescue his foundering presidential candidacy, Giuliani had made a last dash up the southeastern coast in search of votes Tuesday, vowing to confound the pollsters.
At a breakfast stop at a North Miami Beach landmark, Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, Giuliani, the quintessential New Yorker, said: "Polls and predictions have been wrong." Giuliani, who once had a commanding lead in Florida, had slipped into a distant third place in polls behind McCain and Romney.
Giuliani, who competed half-heartedly or not at all in the early states, poured time and money into making a stand in Florida in an effort to save his candidacy and buoy it heading into next week's Republican contests in 21 states.
Disengaged from the focal points of the campaign for long stretches as he pursued his unorthodox strategy of concentrating on later-voting states, Giuliani portrayed himself in recent days as above the fray as McCain and Romney bickered furiously, dominating the news in the waning days of the Florida campaign.
"Senator McCain and Governor Romney are doing such a good job of attacking each other, how about voting for somebody who's not attacking?
Vote for me, Rudy Giuliani," he told a group of several hundred packed into the Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, the last stop on a Sunday bus tour up the Atlantic coast.
Giuliani also made it a point of honor that he had not been endorsed by the New York Times and other liberal editorial boards, a dig at McCain, who was endorsed by Giuliani's hometown newspaper.
The Giuliani campaign banked heavily on a strong organizational effort on the ground here and had been encouraged by heavy early voting and absentee voting. More than one million voters cast early ballots, roughly half in the GOP primary. The campaign made an aggressive attempt to reach voters who applied for absentee ballots, hoping to bank many votes before primary day and said it contacted 90,000 voters on Monday alone in an effort to turn out its vote.
The candidate also emphasized local issues in trying to distinguish himself as the only candidate in the Republican field to embrace a national catastrophe fund to guarantee high-loss insurance policies. It is a major concern in a state often hit by devastating hurricanes.
In the last push through Florida, Giuliani was surrounded by a circle of friends from New York, including several of his former deputy mayors as well as Susan Molinari, a former congresswoman from Staten Island, and Peter King, a congressman from Long Island. Former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci joined Giuliani for part of the final Florida swing, and Texas governor Rick Perry came in for the last leg.
Giuliani's wife, Judith, was often been at his side on the stump in the Sunshine State, after a long period out of public view following a flurry of news stories in late November about police security protection during their extramarital affair in 2000. The campaign entourage also boasted some celebrity wattage with actor Jon Voight, who appeared at every event.
