ELECTION 2008: Rudy expected to quit the race today

BY TOM BRUNE | tom.brune@newsday.com

January 30, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. - Rudy Giuliani failed his own test as a presidential contender yesterday, coming in third in the must-win primary here and clearing the way, sources said, for him to quit and endorse Florida winner and friend John McCain today.

Giuliani, the former New York City mayor known for his 9/11 heroics, desperately needed a win yesterday after pinning all of his hopes on this diverse state loaded with former New Yorkers, but finished 20 points behind McCain for his seventh loss in seven primaries.

That left his unconventional strategy of skipping early states to focus on Florida and larger states voting next Tuesday in tatters and ended the viability of a campaign that never caught fire and went into a tailspin in the last six weeks.

Giuliani stopped short of withdrawing last night. But after negotiating with McCain, according to sources, Giuliani is expected to end his own campaign and endorse McCain today in California, where a GOP debate will be held at the Reagan Presidential Library this evening.

"The responsibility of leadership doesn't end with a single campaign; it goes on and you continue to fight for it," Giuliani said last night to cheers and some tears among about 200 supporters in the Portofino Bay hotel ballroom.

"Win or lose," he said, "our work is not done."

Giuliani and McCain have a friendship that dates back 20 years, though McCain lobbed some of the toughest personal shots of the campaign at Giuliani. He questioned why Giuliani had never visited Iraq and said his post-9/11 experience was admirable but hardly counted as a foreign policy resume.

McCain also questioned why Giuliani recommended Bernie Kerik, his indicted former police commissioner, for Homeland Security secretary. After McCain's Kerik comments, Giuliani's campaign raised McCain's connection to the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal.

But the pair also offered one of the more unusual moments of the campaign last week, when McCain interrupted an answer during a debate to praise Giuliani as a hero for his work on 9/11.

And some Giuliani backers still hold out hopes that McCain might offer Giuliani a spot on his ticket as vice president, though it would require the strong-willed Giuliani to defer to the equally strong-willed McCain, something some who know Giuliani find hard to picture.

In more than a year of campaigning, Giuliani also proved to be a flawed candidate with a flawed strategy, never overcoming conservative unease with his moderate social views and never translating his 9/11 celebrity into GOP votes, some analysts say.

"The strategy was flawed from the beginning," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll. "Whether he could have won with another strategy, we'll never know."

The strategy turned on a bold premise: that with the shortened primary season - 29 contests in five weeks - a candidate could win in Florida and later big states without first building momentum in early smaller states.

In the past weeks, Giuliani repeatedly insisted he would win Florida, a victory his unconventional strategy absolutely required both as a firewall to offset his dismal early losses and as a springboard to the Feb. 5 mega-primary to amass enough delegates for the GOP nomination.

Even though he skipped South Carolina to spend an extra two weeks alone here to cultivate early voters and retool his message to target Florida concerns, Giuliani found himself overshadowed by his warring rivals. Pollster Whit Ayers said Giuliani disappeared from the national Republican political conversation during the past six weeks.

It was a self-inflicted exile. Giuliani chose not to compete in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. He made a run at New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary, but his effort was too little and too late, even his own supporters there say. And after flirting with South Carolina voters, he walked away from its Jan. 19 primary.

Giuliani and his advisers have repeatedly argued the strategy was necessary, and it seemed aimed at minimizing his weaknesses among the GOP base while playing to his strengths.

As early as May his advisers sought to avoid Iowa because of its strong conservative base opposed to Giuliani's support for abortion rights and Mitt Romney's heavy investment there.

Giuliani faced huge hurdles making him foreign to the GOP: a New Yorker in a Sun Belt party; a supporter of abortion rights among anti-abortion activists; a thrice-married father of estranged children in a family values movement.

And the ghosts of his past were always near: In November his former business partner and police commissioner Kerik was indicted, and a news report on the city payments for police protection for his then girlfriend, now wife, Judith Nathan, recalled his headline-making affair though he was married.

And while Giuliani sought to patch those differences by learning to love NASCAR, promising to appoint anti-abortion judges, winning the endorsement of conservative evangelist Pat Robertson and offering school vouchers, he never caught on.

Some analysts accused Giuliani of arrogance for rejecting conventional wisdom.

Based on his seemingly strong leads in early national and many state polls, Giuliani's campaign manager Mike DuHaime and chief strategist Brent Seaborn said the plan could work, and his support seemed so solid he could withstand rivals' momentum.

In November, citing leads in polls in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware, DuHaime said, "Some of those leads are momentum-proof, I think, in terms of just how large they are at this point."

But in the end, Giuliani's precipitous losses in all the states he skipped led to precipitous drops in polls in other states, including New York, where he is now almost 20 points behind McCain.