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Rudy pins hopes on late victories

BY TOM BRUNE | tom.brune@newsday.com

December 30, 2007

WASHINGTON - On a sunny October day in Charleston, S.C., Rudy Giuliani basked in the warmth of a friendly crowd as he won the endorsement of Tommy Thompson, who had dropped out of the Republican presidential race.

For Giuliani, it was one of the good moments in his yearlong campaign. But the dark clouds under the silver lining soon emerged in hard questions that have shadowed him from the start of his run.

How could an anti-abortion stalwart like Thompson back an abortion-rights supporter like Giuliani? And what did Giuliani have to say about new reports that his former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, would soon be indicted on federal charges?

Yet the former mayor remained unflappable in the hotel ballroom decorated with red-on-blue "Rudy" placards and stickers, telling all who would listen that he had an unconventional plan to succeed.

"I bet the people who win," Giuliani said, "are the people who figure out this election rather than the last one."

A different kind of candidate

Early on in his campaign, Giuliani thought he had it figured out, that he could exploit an unprecedented and compressed primary season by going straight to the big states.

To many pundits, the strategy seems improbable. But then so does Giuliani's candidacy.

Out of step with the social-conservative base of his party and weighed down with personal baggage, Giuliani is a dramatic departure from the GOP candidates of the past 30 years.

It's as if he has defied gravity, prompting even Karl Rove and President George W. Bush to remark on his staying power.

For that, analysts credit Giuliani's high name recognition and his admired image as "America's mayor" from his televised reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But they also point out that Giuliani is just one of a GOP presidential field filled with flawed candidates, which has left party conservatives in search of a standard-bearer.

Mitt Romney is tagged as a flip-flopper; John McCain distrusted on campaign finance and immigration; Fred Thompson docked as too late and too low key; and Mike Huckabee hit as no fiscal conservative.

Yet Giuliani and his rivals have taken different paths to what they hope will be victory.

As they scrambled to gain the traditional foothold in Iowa and New Hampshire, Giuliani boasted he would run a national campaign, arguing he would even be competitive in the blue states against the Democratic candidate next November.

For most of the year, that seemed to work.

But in the past two months, as voters have begun taking a closer look, gravity has finally taken hold and Giuliani has dropped in the polls, losing his front-runner status.

Now Giuliani finds himself in a highly competitive, unpredictable five-way race, with McCain rebounding on second looks and Huckabee surging on the hopes of conservatives.

And Giuliani's prospects are now out of his hands.

"It's very difficult to watch the other candidates and the national news media running down one path when you're on another," said GOP analyst Dan Schnur. "The question is, can you protect yourself against another candidate's momentum?"