Can Giuliani Get Into the Republican Game in Florida?

By Stuart Rothenberg

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) has taken quite a hit recently both in the national media and in national polls. Journalists have noted that his crowds during the first two weeks of January were small, leading some to conclude that the mayor’s presidential race may be over even before it has begun.

But as we’ve already seen a number of times during this presidential campaign, it’s wise not to jump to conclusions, and Giuliani’s strategy has not yet been tested. There’s no need for you to be the first on your block to write off the New Yorker.

Giuliani’s fading strength in the national polls, his eroded standing in Quinnipiac University’s Florida polling and his poor crowds recently stem from the same factor: He didn’t compete in the early contests, where most of the attention and all of the initial excitement was located.

For many months, I’ve said that I thought Giuliani’s Florida/Feb. 5 strategy was both silly and plausible, and there is no reason to change that assessment at this point.

The mayor has tried to stay relevant in the Republican race by participating in debates, but those appearances alone didn’t make him a factor in Iowa, New Hampshire or Michigan, and he simply got lost. He’s likely to stay lost until after South Carolina, when he’ll take off his warm-up outfit and rush into the game long after all of the other players already have scored some points and drawn cheers from the fans.

Rudy’s strategy is fundamentally flawed because it allows the other candidates to control the process. They are the focus of attention, not him. If he is relevant at the end of January, it is only because no strong favorite has emerged from the early contests.

So Giuliani took the unwise gamble of passing on the early states, figuring that defeats there would destroy his candidacy. However risky, unwise and silly his strategy, it so far has worked as his strategists hoped. Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan were won by different contestants, and no matter what happens in South Carolina this weekend, the New Yorker will have a chance to alter the dynamics of the GOP race on Jan. 29, when he enters the Republican mix.

The crucial point is this: Giuliani didn’t fall in the national polls because Republican voters decided he doesn’t have the stuff to be president. He didn’t see his crowds thin because rank-and-file Republicans finally turned thumbs down on his more moderate social views (on abortion, gay rights or gun control). And he didn’t fall off the media’s national radar because Republicans remembered his friendship with Bernie Kerik or his messy personal life when he was still serving as mayor.

Giuliani’s star dimmed during the first half of January, not because he committed a gaffe but because he made himself irrelevant. When he becomes relevant at the end of January, both voters and the national media will once again turn to Rudy, and that’s when he’ll have his shot.

This isn’t to say that his strategy hasn’t already affected his prospects. If you don’t play, you can’t win, and you can’t build up any momentum along the way, as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney already have done. On the other hand, momentum apparently is overrated this year, since neither Huckabee’s victory in the caucuses nor McCain’s in New Hampshire catapulted them to a win in the next contest.

Possibly more important, Giuliani’s Florida/Feb. 5 strategy requires a lot of money, since it is based on a strong showing in a large number of states, many of them heavily populated, stretching from coast to coast.

You can win Iowa, as Huckabee proved, without a lot of cash. And you can overcome a large financial disadvantage in New Hampshire, as McCain demonstrated. Both of those states require and reward retail politics. But Giuliani’s strategy requires a lot of money, and he’s rapidly running out of it, according to most reports.

The first three Republican outcomes demonstrate that the GOP is badly fractured. That’s good for Giuliani, who benefits from the chaos and can offer himself up to Republicans as someone the entire party can get behind. However, McCain’s inability to attract the support of conservatives ought to create concern inside the Giuliani camp, which, like that of the Arizona Senator, ultimately needs support from those Republican primary voters.

Despite the early national polls, Rudy Giuliani never was the clear frontrunner in the GOP race. He merely was the biggest national celebrity in a contest that is not a national one. Still, after ignoring Iowa, pulling out of New Hampshire (after spending millions there) and bypassing Michigan and South Carolina, the former mayor continues to have his admirers and a scenario that says that he can win the Republican nomination.

Yes, even though the Republican nomination is still up for grabs and Giuliani’s strategy has so far paid off, he remains only a long shot for the Republican nomination. But given the weirdness that is the 2008 presidential race, that’s not half bad.



This column first appeared in Roll Call on January 17, 2008. Copyright 2008 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

A Big McCain Win, But Trouble in the Weeds

By Stuart Rothenberg

Sen. John McCain won a narrow victory in South Carolina on Saturday, but the final results and the exit poll continue to show a very fractured Republican party without a single candidate who has emerged as a consensus choice.

Once again the devil is in the details, and anyone who digs through the exit poll will find that the GOP race is still wide open.

McCain won again, as he did in New Hampshire, on the basis of strong support from self-described moderates and liberals, and by attracting the votes of Independents. He won among primary voters who believe abortion should be legal, who believe that illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship and who had a negative opinion of the Bush Administration.

McCain and Huckabee each won about 30 percent of the GOP, with Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson drawing another 16 percent each. Huckabee easily won conservatives, evangelical Christians, and voters who favored deporting illegal aliens.

Did McCain measurably improve on his 2000 showing in South Carolina? Not if you compare the 2000 and 2008 exit polls.

In 2000, McCain won 29 percent of self-described conservatives. This time, he won just 26 percent. In 2000, he drew 26 percent of Republicans. This time he won 30 percent – an improvement but not a dramatic one. McCain won 48 percent of veterans in 2000 against George W. Bush but only 37 percent this time.

If McCain didn’t increase his percentages, why did he win? McCain won because of the fractured GOP field. Huckabee, Thompson and Romney divided the GOP vote and conservatives, allowing McCain to win with only a third of the total primary vote.

McCain’s formula for victory can work in states that allow Independents to vote, but it’s still unclear whether he can compete successfully in states with closed primaries, which includes a number of Super Tuesday states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Montana, New York, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

McCain’s victory is disappointing news for Rudy Giuliani, who is waiting in Florida. Giuliani’s poll numbers have been slipping, and McCain’s momentum could make him appealing to some Florida Republicans who had been considering the former New York Mayor.

Some observers surely will see McCain’s victory in South Carolina as fundamentally changing the GOP race. But the evidence is not there yet that that is the case. If you look deep, deep into the weeds, the Republicans are still in a very wide-open race.


This item also appeared on Political Wire.

Winners & Losers From Iowa

By Stuart Rothenberg

After months of speculation about who’ll win Iowa, we finally have winners and losers. Some of them are obvious, while others may not be. One thing for sure is that a rousing speech on caucus night doesn’t mean a candidate has won. In some cases, losers seemed to yell even louder than winners.

Iowa Winners

1. Barack Obama.
The easiest pick of the night, Obama’s win means that he goes to New Hampshire as a winner. No, the Democratic contest is not over, but if he wins in the Granite State, he’ll be hard to stop in South Carolina. And if he sweeps those three, he may never look back.

Entrance polling showed Iowa Democrats responded strongly to Obama’s message of change – half of Democrats said that the top quality they were looking for in a candidate was his or her ability to bring about change, and of those respondents, 51 percent voted for Obama. The Illinois Democrat’s campaign also clearly benefited from the surge in Democratic turnout and from the participation of Iowans who had never before caucused.

Obama won among caucus-goers who said the war was the top issue, as well as among those who identified the economy or health care as the most important issue. He won “very liberal” and “somewhat liberal” Democratic caucus attendees handily, and nosed out Clinton among self-described moderates. All in all, an impressive performance.

2. Mike Huckabee.
In May, Huckabee wasn’t even on the radar screen in Iowa. At the end of the day, he was outspent, and he won what is always regarded as an “organizational race” without much of an organization.

Huckabee clobbered the rest of the GOP field on two key candidate qualities: “shares my values” and “says what he believes.” That’s a good place to start when you are running for your party’s Presidential nomination.

But Huckabee did as well as he did on Thursday only because of the make-up of Thursday’s Republican caucus-goers. The former Arkansas Governor won the caucuses because he cleaned up among the most conservative and most religious attendees. Six out of ten GOP caucus-goes were evangelicals, and he won them 46 percent to 19 percent over Mitt Romney.

Among the 36 percent of GOP attendees who said that the religious beliefs of the candidates matter “a great deal,” Huckabee won 56 percent – five times more than Romney, McCain or Thompson. But New Hampshire doesn’t look like natural Huckabee territory, and the Arkansas Republican’s long-term prospects in the race are not as bright as they may look today.

3. John McCain.
Sure, McCain finished essentially tied for third with Fred Thompson, but Romney’s less than sterling showing could dry up some of the former Massachusetts governor’s support in New Hampshire, and that could boost McCain’s prospects on Tuesday. The only problem for the Arizona Republican: If the Obama bandwagon draws even more Granite State Independents into the Democratic primary, depriving McCain of potential supporters.

4. Rudy Giuliani.
The win by Huckabee means that the GOP race is as confused as ever, and that’s a plus for the former New York City mayor, who benefits from confusion in the early contests. Giuliani’s chances for the Republican nomination don’t look all that bright, but he would have been much worse off if Romney had won in Iowa.

Iowa Losers.

1. John Edwards.
Anyone who listened to Edwards’s caucus night speech had to be asking, “What’s he smoking?”

After drawing 32 percent in the 2004 caucuses and spending the next four years camped out in the state, Edwards finished essentially tied for second on Thursday. To make matters worse, the other “change” candidate in the contest, Barack Obama, finished first. And, Obama’s optimistic change message trumped Edwards’s angry, populist message.

Edwards, who railed against corporate greed, focused on jobs and trade and aimed his message at the “little guy,” lost union households to both Clinton and Obama.

Edwards will now have major resource problems, and he isn’t likely to do well in New Hampshire. If his comments last night are any indication, he isn’t likely to go quietly. But the former North Carolina senator is in serious trouble. He needed to win in Iowa, and he didn’t. It’s just that simple.

2. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton’s problem isn’t that Edwards nosed her out for second; it’s that caucus attendees preferred change over experience, raising questions about her fundamental appeal. The calendar isn’t her friend over the next month, and she’ll be peppered with process questions when she’d rather talk about things that voters want to hear.

Nobody should count the New York senator out. Iowa, after all, is just a single state, and Clinton and Obama ran virtually even among self-described Democrats in Iowa, which offers her hope in true closed primary states. But Clinton no longer is in the driver’s seat, as indicated by the fact that she lost women, 35 percent to 30 percent, to Obama in the caucuses.

3. Mitt Romney.
How do you go from a prohibitive favorite in the Iowa caucuses to a surprisingly distant runner-up to Mike Huckabee? Ask Romney. He did it.

Romney won with upscale Republicans, more moderate and urban GOP caucus-goers and those for whom the religious beliefs of the candidate didn’t matter a lot. But he got swamped by conservative evangelicals who wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. He won’t have that problem in New Hampshire, but he has a different one there: John McCain.

Romney needs a win in the Granite State or in Michigan to stay in the hunt. One of his biggest problems is that caucus attendees didn’t think that “he says what he believes.”

Where the Presidential Nomination Races Are ... and Where to Look

By Stuart Rothenberg

More than three months before the crucial Iowa caucuses, there are good reasons for treating national surveys with great skepticism and for placing greater weight on the candidates’ standing and strength in Iowa and New Hampshire.

First, the candidates actually have been campaigning for months in those two states — meeting voters and airing ads. Voters, therefore, are basing their decisions on more than name recognition. They have looked at and listened to the hopefuls and made informed judgments about each of the candidates as a potential nominee and a potential president.

Of course, Iowa and New Hampshire voters have changed their opinions quickly in the past as the caucuses and primary have approached, and they may do so again this cycle (see my April 5 column, “Already, Too Much of the ’08 Coverage Is Quite Misleading”). But you are likely to take note of that change sooner if you are looking at state polls rather than at national survey numbers.

Second, the Iowa and New Hampshire results will create a dynamic that will affect the media’s coverage of the race, as well as the public’s perception of the candidates and the nature of their choices. After Iowa and New Hampshire, there will be winners and losers, candidates who failed to meet expectations, and, probably, those who exceeded expectations.

Simply put, developments in the early tests will affect the attitudes of voters in late January and February primary and caucus states. Could a candidate jump-start a candidacy in early February? Possibly, but certainly only if the January contests break just right.

If polls are snapshots, why are the national ones badly out of focus?

National polling currently includes too many respondents from states where no TV advertising has been aired and where the candidates have barely set foot. Respondents in those states aren’t paying close attention to the races and are basing their responses primarily on name recognition or general impressions. That is why celebrity candidates run best in national surveys.

If former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) wins the Iowa caucuses, as many expect, he’ll become a hot political property for the media, which should boost his national standing and prospects, even though he now runs a distant fourth in national polling.

In fact, given Romney’s strong showings currently in Iowa and New Hampshire, his prospects for the Republican nomination currently are as good as or better than former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s or former Sen. Fred Thompson’s (Tenn.).

One veteran Iowa Democrat who is deeply involved in his party’s caucuses thinks that the GOP die already is cast. “Romney will be the Republican nominee,” the insider said. “He has the best organization by far in Iowa. Nobody else comes close. The second-best Republican organization in the state probably is [Mike] Huckabee’s. Rudy’s got nothing in the state. Neither does Fred Thompson.”

Winning Iowa certainly wouldn’t guarantee Romney his party’s nomination. Ronald Reagan was nosed out by George H.W. Bush in the caucuses in 1980 yet won New Hampshire and the GOP nomination. Eight years later, George H.W. Bush replicated Reagan’s path.

Still, Romney’s early strength in New Hampshire, combined with a probable win in Iowa and the likelihood that independents in the Granite State will both vote in significant numbers in the Democratic race and not unite behind a single GOP hopeful (as they did in 2000, when they backed Arizona Sen. John McCain), make the former Massachusetts governor the frontrunner in the nation’s first primary, at least at this point.

Romney’s opponents have yet to launch their inevitable flip-flopper attacks on him, and we don’t yet know how those attacks will affect his candidacy. But if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney surely will be the frontrunner in the Republican race. Given that, he should be included in the list of GOP frontrunners, even now.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.) lead in the national polls could crumble quickly if she places second or third in Iowa. Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) are currently bunched together in the Hawkeye State, and anything could happen in the Democrats’ caucuses.

Clinton’s resources, experience, national political organization and, yes, gender give her an advantage in the race for the Democratic nomination. Those factors, as well as the fact that she is widely known, make it reasonable to call her a narrow favorite for her party’s nomination. But the national poll numbers greatly exaggerate her current standing in the Democratic race.

I’m not suggesting that national poll numbers are irrelevant. They do reflect national name recognition and the initial standing of the candidates. But so many important developments will occur before voters in Florida, California or Illinois get to cast their primary votes — developments that will color the public’s perception of the two presidential races — that the national numbers, as well as poll numbers in later states, have little predictive value now.

National numbers simply don’t deserve anything close to the attention that they are receiving in the national media, and particularly on TV. If you really want to know how Romney and Clinton are doing, keep your eye on Iowa and New Hampshire.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on September 20, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

There’s Still Plenty of Uncertainty After McCain’s Shake-up

By Stuart Rothenberg

First there were four, and now there are three — three top-tier GOP presidential candidates, at least if you count a guy who still isn’t officially a candidate. Sen. John McCain now has the second tier all to himself.

The shake-up at the McCain presidential campaign isn’t as much an answer to the Arizona Senator’s problems as a reflection of the campaign’s multiple difficulties. Let’s be clear: The McCain campaign’s burn rate on funds was too high, but that’s not why the Arizona Republican’s prospects have slipped.

Given McCain’s cash, his poll numbers and the state of his campaign, he has few options, according to one veteran political strategist with whom I talked, except to “park himself in New Hampshire, shut down his operations elsewhere and try to make a comeback in a state that he won eight years ago.”

Regardless of whether you agree with that assessment, it’s quite clear that McCain doesn’t have any appealing options to choose from now. Still, if you are the Arizonan, making your second bid for the GOP nomination and beginning this race as the early favorite, why not hope that Republican voters — much as Democratic voters did in 2004 — reassess the candidates early next year and give the initial frontrunner a second shot?

McCain’s problems should benefit former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who becomes the sole top-tier moderate in the race. McCain, of course, never called himself a moderate or campaigned as one, but he has been viewed that way by many conservative Republicans, primarily because of his work with Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (Wis.) and Edward Kennedy (Mass.) on high-profile issues.

“Moderates constitute no more than a third of the party, and I’m being generous, but now you have two conservatives [former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson] fighting over two-thirds of the party, and Giuliani all alone with moderates,” one neutral GOP insider told me recently.

Thompson, of course, is not yet officially in the race, and nobody is quite sure what he’s waiting for. He’s raising millions of dollars, and allies of the former Tennessee Senator are reaching out to prospective hires for the campaign.

Yet while other candidates are filing Federal Election Commission reports and responding to media questions, Thompson’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, refuses to discuss the shadow candidate’s fundraising except to say that the campaign’s goal, if Thompson runs, “is to raise enough money to win.”

Well that really clarifies things. At least we can now rule out that Thompson is trying to raise enough money to lose.

Thompson doesn’t have to get in now, but his delay does make one wonder whether he is trying to avoid something. Given the recent criticism of his lobbying efforts on abortion, it isn’t as if he’s avoiding scrutiny by not having announced his candidacy.

Thompson isn’t forced to compete in the Ames, Iowa, straw vote if he doesn’t want to. He could have announced weeks ago that he was entering the race too late to put together the organizational effort needed for a strong showing in the Aug. 11 event. Maybe he’s delaying to see whether a last-minute effort at Ames might vault him to second place in Iowa even though he has little or no organization on the ground.

Anyway, it’s hard not to conclude that Thompson is trying to run out the clock — even before he has suited up and entered the game — so that he doesn’t even have to campaign.

Clearly, Thompson starts off as a major player in the GOP contest. A number of Republican insiders told me they believe he will vault to the front of national GOP polling when he enters the race, and the real question is how quickly and how far his numbers slide after they spike on his entry.

“People don’t know anything about Fred Thompson,” acknowledged one Republican strategist who is at least sympathetic to the Tennessean, adding, “Conservatives are seeing in him what they want to see in him. They are projecting their views onto him.”

“Can he hold the strength that he now has? It’s a close call,” noted the thoughtful observer, adding that “while he’s obviously a skilled performer, outside of a formal setting, like when he is made up for ‘Meet the Press,’ he doesn’t look that good, and he isn’t that sharp on policy.”

Thompson could either turn out to be just what conservative Republicans are looking for, in which case he could well end up being the GOP nominee, or an absolute dud who disappoints grass-roots Republicans looking to him to save the party.

The McCain fall from the top tier creates an interesting calendar dynamic, since after Romney, McCain had invested most heavily in the Iowa caucuses. With Giuliani not doing much in Iowa — rival campaigns go so far as to say that he apparently is conceding the state — and Thompson still not in the race or organized in the Hawkeye State, the burden is on Romney to blow away the field in state contests, both in Ames and in January.

If McCain downsizes in Iowa, will the Giuliani campaign seek to upgrade its effort in the state, hoping to take advantage of a crowd of conservative candidates who fracture the right-of-center electorate?

If Romney is able to win the caucuses decisively, he would have a chance at a one-two punch with a win in New Hampshire, a quirky open primary where Romney’s Mormonism isn’t regarded as nearly as big a problem as in the South and rural Midwest.

And will Giuliani really be able to wait until Florida, in late January, to compete full throttle in a GOP contest, as some think he hopes to do?

McCain’s slide answers some questions but raises others. Meanwhile, many GOPers are waiting for Fred ... which, increasingly, seems a bit like waiting for Godot.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on July 12, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.