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Giuliani counts on New Yorkers for Florida vote

BY TOM BRUNE | tom.brune@newsday.com

11:10 PM EST, January 24, 2008

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Could the millions of New Yorkers who have moved away to Florida and other states over the years save Rudy Giuliani's sinking presidential hopes?

And even if they could, would they?

Those questions have emerged with some urgency in the wake of recent polls showing Giuliani's popularity slipping among Republicans here and nationally, leaving him badly in need of a jump-start with a win in Florida's primary on Tuesday.

"Of course, they will help him," said Bill McCollum, Giuliani's state campaign chairman, in an interview Thursday.

But that help likely will be limited by a variety of issues, making ex-New Yorkers a factor, but likely not the deciding factor.

McCollum and other campaign officials implicitly acknowledge those limits by stressing their need to reach other voting blocs: Cuban-Americans, fiscal conservatives and national security hawks.

"They'll be in the mix," said Rudy Washington, one of Giuliani's New York insiders who has come down to help in what could be the last stand.

Certainly there are a lot of New Yorkers here.

In the past decade alone more than 600,000 New Yorkers have relocated here, according to estimates from IRS migration data, which tracks moves through tax returns.

Yet they are just the latest wave, said Stan Smith, director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida. "For the last four decades," he said, "New York was at least double the second leading state in every period."

New Yorkers relocating here since 1995 represent, in a rough estimate, as much as 3 percent to 6 percent of Florida's 10 million registered voters, giving them a little clout.

Most New Yorkers have landed in three southeastern counties that include Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, the IRS data show.

Those three counties -- Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach -- account for a fifth of the state's voters, with 2 million registrations.

But two-thirds of them are Democrats, another key limitation on the help former New Yorkers can give Giuliani.

New York City's Democrats may have twice elected Giuliani mayor, but in Tuesday's Republican primary only Republicans can vote -- no Democrats or independents.

Still, those counties are also home to 830,000 registered Republicans, so the New Yorkers among them could be a help.

But that raises the second question: Will they?

Giuliani's campaign is aware of the ex-New Yorker factor, though several aides said they had no plan to target New Yorkers since they "self-identify."

At his rallies here and elsewhere, Giuliani often sees hats and T-shirts carrying a Yankees emblem or FDNY logo, and once joked he sees more New Yorkers here than at home.

Earlier this week, New York State's GOP chief Joseph Mondello began his list of Florida voting blocs for Giuliani with "transplanted New Yorkers."

The campaign hopes to enlist the support of ex-New Yorkers in other states where another 2.4 million of them relocated.

Those transplants all experienced parts of Giuliani's tenure as New York mayor from 1994 to 2001, either as constituents or nearby spectators. Nobody down here knows him better.

Whether that means they would vote for or against him remains to be seen.

Some are believers, praising him for slashing crime and providing leadership on 9/11, like John Fisher, a retired city worker who moved to Palm Harbor from Garden City in 1995 and has worked Giuliani's phone banks. "We're getting a very good response," he said.

Yet after finishing dismally in six primaries, Giuliani has seen his poll numbers drop everywhere, even in the 15 to 16 states with many ex-New Yorkers, and New York itself.

That's bad news.

Giuliani long led in the polls in South Carolina, for example, as he drew former New York retirees to rallies, including Paul and Marianne Pecoraro to a meeting in Aiken last August.

"I like Giuliani. I really think he's terrific," said Marianne, who grew up in Upper Brookville. But she voted for Mitt Romney. One reason she invoked revealed another trait of New Yorkers: Romney, she said, looked like a winner.

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