Boca Raton, FL — While recent polling out of Florida makes the GOP primary look increasingly like a two-man battle between John McCain and Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani is arguing that we should not count him out yet.
An internal Giuliani memo suggests that the most recent polls report “conflicting results,” noting that five public polls released in the last 24 hours show McCain leading in two polls, Romney leading in two polls and a three-way tie in the last. It also argues that absentee and early voting may work in the campaign’s advantage since Giuliani has had the state to himself for the last three weeks.
But the memo does not account for the latest Mason-Dixon poll out today, showing Romney at 30%, McCain at 26% and Giuliani at 18%, further proof that despite the memo, the former NYC mayor continues to lose ground in the Sunshine State.
Read the memo below:
A handful of FL public polls released over the past few days are reporting conflicting results. These latest rounds of fluctuating public polls indicate that the race is wide open and public polling is volatile.
There were 5 public polls released over the past 24 hours, claiming different candidates to be leading.
Further complicating matters, 3 of these polls were fielded on the exact same nights (1/20-1/22). Insider Advantage reports Romney leading, St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald reports McCain leading, and Strategic Vision reports a 3 way tie.
Estero, FL — Despite spending more than 50 days in Florida during the last year and having the state to himself for the last three weeks (during which he launched 8 TV ads), Rudy Giuliani continues to slide in the latest polls. The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times latest poll show Giuliani tied for third place in his must win state, down 20 points from a November poll.
John McCain 25
Mitt Romney 23
Rudy Giuliani 15
Mike Huckabee 15
(Margin of error is +/-5%)
Giuliani’s response today to the falling polls? “I think the reality is we are gaining support, I think your going to see that over the course of the next three or four days. Our campaign is now in high gear. I think the issues that we are hitting on are the key ones to the people of Florida. And the most important one is proven leadership which the people of Florida want. And I think they want someone who understands how to turn around an economy, which I have done before. And I think they want someone who can lead this country in the terrorists; war against us. As those ideas seep through, and get through, we are gonna do very well here….I believe we are going to win here. This has to go day by day. Each day you gotta work at it, and each day you make progress.”
Though one important caveat to the polling numbers in the Sunshine State is the fact that Floridians have the opportunity to early vote (began on Jan. 14) and absentee vote. Nearly 270,000 registered GOPers have already cast their ballots. Additionally, Giuliani’s campaign has been conducting a very aggressive get out the vote operation and pushing potential supporters to vote early, meaning polls in the lead up to the election and day of exit polls may fail to accurately predict the ultimate outcome.
Over the course of the last two days, a slew of polls were released showing Sen. John McCain nearly tied with or now edging out Rudy Giuliani in Feb 5 primary states the former NYC mayor’s campaign had considered guaranteed winners (New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware.)
Additionally, the McCain campaign has issued the following press releases in the last two days:
01.23.08 Delaware Leaders Join Supporters Of John McCain
01.22.08 John McCain Announces Connecticut Leadership Team
01.22.08 John McCain 2008 Announces New York Leadership Team
01.22.08 John McCain 2008 Announces New Jersey Leadership Team
01.22.08 Connecticut State Senator Anthony Guglielmo Endorses John McCain For President
01.22.08 John McCain 2008 Announces New Jersey Legislative Endorsements
01.22.08 Senator Alfonse D’Amato Endorses John McCain For President
Message to Rudy: McCain is ready for battle on your home turf on February 5th.
Naples, FL — The International Association of Fire Fighters sent out their first direct mail to Florida voters today attacking Rudy Giuliani’s judgment and pre/post 911 leadership.
In the mailer, they declare: “Rudy Giuliani isn’t qualified to be President. he shamelessly uses the events of 9/11 for his own political gain. The truth is, Giuliani used poor judgment leading up to and on the day of the attacks. He was unprepared to protect New York, and he is unprepared to lead our country.”
The mailer–which includes a photo of Giuliani’s back turned–specifically targets the former New York City mayor for showing “bad judgment” and hiring “unqualified yes-men” and includes a testimonial quote from the father of a firefighter who died on 9/11 who calls Rudy a “coward.”
The piece targets 178,000 Republican women between the ages of 40 and 80 (security moms), according to IAFF President Harold Schaitberger. IAFF members have been protesting Giuliani at several of his Florida events during the last few weeks.
The IAFF–a union that includes 288,000 members—leans Democrat and endorsed Chris Dodd for president last year. In 2004 they endorsed John Kerry. Even so, Schaitberger says that the IAFF has only historically promoted their candidate and has rarely run a campaign opposing others.
“This is very unusual and rare for us. We have a history of supporting candidates, not opposing them,” he said in a phone interview. “But Giuliani’s actions in our view were so egregious that we decided this is in one of the times we had to go after somebody.”
The IAFF has been waiting for Rudy in Florida for a few months and Schaitberger said, “we will be dogging him till the 29th.”
“I’m supporting Rudy Giuliani because of the things he’s done. Jim Riches and IAFF do not speak for me or for all firefighters. Firefighters from across the country are supporting Rudy Giuliani for all the things he has done to advocate for firemen and first responders and that he will do for us as President of the United States.” –campaign national firefighter chair, Larry Peterson. (Also a division chief with the Jacksonville Fire Department.)
Naples, FL — Rudy Giuliani takes a shot at John McCain and Mitt Romney (albeit subtle) for their lack of support for a national catastrophe fund he argues will lower insurance rates in a web-only ad the campaign released Wednesday.
“Some say we don’t need a national catastrophe fund. That FEMA can handle disasters,” the ad begins, referring to comments McCain made this week without directly using his name. Moving onto Romney, the ad continues, “others say they haven’t looked at it yet and want to sit down with insurance companies first.”
Giuliani has made his support for the fund one of his key talking points in the Florida, where voters in the hurricane prone state are coping with increasingly high insurance rates. The campaign’s state chairman, Bill McCollum, called McCain “out of touch” with FL voters this week for his opposition to the fund, but Giuliani has been reluctant to criticize his rivals directly, instead reaffirming that he is the “only” supporter.
The ad concludes: “Only one Republican candidate has proven experience dealing with disaster. Only one will fight for a national catastrophe fund. And only one has a plan to lower rates and fix the insurance mess. Tested in crisis. Ready to lead. Rudy Giuliani. The only one for Florida.”
Palm Beach Gardens, FL — Rudy Giuliani punted today when asked to backup criticism his campaign surrogates have leveled against his rivals, including John McCain.
done
In recent days, his national and state officials including his state chair, Bill McCollum, have equated McCain with Democrats and said he is “out of touch” with Florida voters because of his opposition to a National Catastrophic Fund. But Giuliani declined to back up McCollum today and continues to go easy on his friend McCain, noting that he doesn’t believe “Republicans should be attacking each other.”
We will be tuning in for Thursday night’s GOP debate to see whether Giuliani is finally willing to directly engage him.
But no such reticence today on the part of Mitt Romney, who attacked McCain’s economic credibility in a Palm Beach Post interview. “What’s his record by the way? What’s McCain’s record of job growth? What’s he done? Has he been involved in jobs at all in the private sector? In a state? In a city? I think you have to have a record before you criticize someone else’s,” Romney said.
There’s the tactical consideration — what Fabrizio called the “pool table” problem posed by a multi-candidate race — that criticizing, say, McCain would help Giuliani, but also help Romney. That’s because some of the voters Giuliani pulls from McCain could go to him, but a big portion could also go to Romney. “They are in a very difficult situation,” he said of the Giuliani campaign. “I don’t think it’s a clear shot for him to figure out who to go after.”
West Palm Beach, FL — With one week to go before the Florida primary the Giuliani campaign is beginning to take aim at who they believe is its biggest threat, John McCain.
Giuliani said Monday he is going to get “quite sharp on policy differences,” but is still playing clean for the most part as he vows to draw contrasts “in a respectful way.”
done
Thus far, he personally has only pointed to McCain’s votes against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but has left the contrasts there thus far. Critics say Giuliani will have to ratchet up the rhetoric if he hopes to take the AZ senator down–noting that Romney already tried to critique McCain’s tax record in New Hampshire and it failed to resonate with voters.
But several surrogates and aides he sent out today did take it up a level, calling McCain “out of touch” and equating him with Democrats…..
Jacksonville, FL — Despite falling polls and a shortage of campaign cash, Rudy Giuliani attempted to assure voters Monday that his strategy is “playing out the way we thought it would play out.”
The latest polls out Monday showed Giuliani trailing in his home state of New York to Sen. John McCain. Giuliani is down by 12 in a new Sienna poll after leading McCain by 33 points in December and is trailing the Arizona senator in his home state by 15 percent in the latest Marist poll.
The NY polls come on the heels of two other recent polls showing him also losing ground in New Jersey and Connecticut–two states his strategists referred to as “momentum-proof,” and fall in line with his fall in national polling.
Giuliani’s reaction to the polls: it’s all about Florida. “For us, it’s Florida. We’ll think about New York and California. We’ll think about Illinois. We’ll think about Missouri….we’ll think about everything on the morning of the 30th of January,” Giuliani said. “It’s playing out the way we thought it would play out. Now the most important thing is, we thought it would play out with us our winning Florida so that’s going to be an important thing for us to accomplish…it’s all about Florida.”
Hizzoner will make one stop in the West Palm Beach area Tuesday before returning to New York to raise some necessary campaign bucks. He has previously said that he is planning to spend “almost everything” on the Sunshine State primary.
The Clinton campaign is accusing Obama of a “clear and blatant violation” of an agreement not to campaign in Florida — not by stumping in the Sunshine State or advertising on local TV, but by buying national ad time on CNN.
In a statement, the Clinton camp claims 92% of Florida households get the cable news network, saying “the Obama campaign knows this, but has chosen to violate the pledge regardless.”
“The early state pledge was crystal clear in its prohibition of any kind of campaign activity… There is no ambiguity.”
The agreement among Democratic candidates was meant to protect the importance of traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (as well as the DNC-sanctioned early state of Nevada) by pledging not to spend time or ad dollars in delegate-heavy states like Michigan and Florida that moved their primaries up into the month of January against DNC rules.
UPDATE: Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the cable networks told the campaign that it would be impossible to run national ads excluding only Florida, and that they consulted with South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler before buying the ad time. She said she didn’t consider the national buy to be a violation of the pledge.
Read the Clinton campaign’s full statement after the jump.
John McCain says he’s been under attack from other candidates since his poll numbers started climbing in December. A day after winning the SC primary, McCain took a shot at Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor has been campaigning in Florida, criticizing the Senator’s record on taxes.
done
McCain admits that it’s a whole new ballgame now. The Senator shines in the town hall format, sometimes getting into heated debates with voters. He held more than a hundred town halls in New Hampshire, and quite a few in South Carolina.
But now there are too many states and too little time to rely solely on face-to-face contact with voters.
Report: Line-Cutting Dispute Led to Wal-Mart Trampling A line-cutting dispute among shoppers who waited for hours outside a New York Wal-Mart and those who stayed inside their cars led to the stampede that killed a worker for the store, Newsday reports.
Dodd Backs Auto Bailout URGENT: Senate panel chief supports move as Big Three auto CEOs return to Congress to ask for billions in aid
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Woman Says She Saw Missing Florida Tot at Airport A Florida woman insists that she saw missing toddler Caylee Anthony over the summer at Orlando International Airport and the child even uttered her own name.
