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Some experts say Rudy's bid was bound to fail

BY MARK HARRINGTON | mark.harrington@newsday.com

February 6, 2008

Rudy Giuliani yesterday completed a transition from front-runner to footnote in the 2008 GOP race, stumping in Manhattan for Sen. John McCain after a spectacular campaign meltdown fanned by pockets of hometown dissent.

Giuliani appeared at a dawn rally for McCain in Rockefeller Center, a week after a decisive primary defeat in Florida led the former New York City mayor to call it quits.

Introducing McCain in New York yesterday brought a humbled Giuliani full circle - from the place that launched his iron-fisted political career as mayor and back to a state where his standing in the polls had plummeted in recent weeks, placing him tied at best with McCain.

According to the recently shredded Giuliani campaign playbook, momentum from a Florida win was to have ignited a Super Tuesday sweep - topped by an expected victory in New York. But after a string of early primary defeats topped by Florida, some observers have begun to question whether his front-runner status in late 2007 polls ever amounted to anything more than name recognition. Giuliani campaign staffers did not respond to requests for comment, and Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, declined to comment.

"The tide was bound to change for Rudy Giuliani because he had an artificial lead to begin with," said Peter Woolley, executive director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll. When other Republican candidates increased in visibility, he said, Giuliani's negatives - the Bernie Kerik indictment, strained family relations - didn't stand comparison. "He had high name recognition, but it cut both ways," Woolley said. "He had a lot of baggage."

Worse, the hometown support that normally lifts a candidate campaigning away from home mutated into a resounding Bronx cheer from important constituencies. In Florida, former New York City fire chief Jim Riches hounded Giuliani from Jacksonville to Miami, blasting his performance on Sept. 11 on the nightly news. The night of a GOP debate in Boca Raton, a New York Times editorial eviscerated Giuliani as "narrow" and "vindictive," while two dozen former New York prosecutors questioned his claims to having "turned around" their office when he was U.S. attorney.

"His political and personal issues were not going to wear well," said Steve Cohen, a professor of public administration at Columbia University, who nevertheless argued that it wasn't just the baggage.

"Giuliani likes being in charge, but I don't think he likes being the supplicant asking for support," he said.

Where does Giuliani go now? Certainly the consulting business bearing his name suffered from no lack of publicity from the presidential run, his cut-and-run early primary strategy notwithstanding.

Cohen of Columbia said even though the electability of Giuliani is in question nationally, his name recognition in New York still carries weight.

"It's not hard to imagine him being talked about as governor of New York, running against [Gov. Eliot] Spitzer," Cohen said.

If so, don't expect the baggage to lighten anytime soon. Former fire chief Riches said he was aghast to see Giuliani appearing with McCain in New York, and shudders at the thought of the former mayor in a McCain cabinet. No matter the office, vowed Riches, "We will be against him."