"Giuliani: Can hero of 9/11 win over his own party?"

Giuliani: Can hero of 9/11 win over his own party?
Posted 1/31/2007 11:19 PM ET
By Susan Page, USA TODAY

BRETTON WOODS, N.H. — Rudy Giuliani would seem to have all the credentials a candidate for president could want: A hero of 9/11, a crime-busting federal prosecutor, a two-term Republican mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city and one of the most admired politicians in the country.

He's got a big problem, though. First, he has to be nominated by Republicans who don't yet know his views on social issues.

"People remember how he provided leadership at a time the city needed it and the country needed it," says coin-company executive Jeff Marsh, 41, as he waits to greet Giuliani at the annual dinner of the Littleton (N.H.) Chamber of Commerce. While Marsh's admiration of
Giuliani the man is evident, however, his support for Giuliani the presidential candidate is no sure thing. Giuliani's advocacy of abortion rights gives him "some pause," Marsh says ruefully.
The question is this: Can the thrice-married New Yorker — a supporter of abortion rights, gay rights and gun control — win the nomination of a Republican Party that has become increasingly dependent on and influenced by conservative Christians?

Maybe not, says Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster who advised Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.

"As a presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani should absolutely be taken seriously," Fabrizio says. "As a contender for the Republican nomination, he should be taken significantly less seriously. He has the stature to be president, but how does he get the Republican nomination? That is the fundamental disconnect."

Republicans tend to stick with front-runners. In each of the last nine presidential elections, the GOP contender who led the field the year before the election has won the nomination. Despite Giuliani's edge at the starting line, however, there is widespread skepticism among insiders such as Fabrizio whether he'll be there at the finish.

With the war in Iraq raging and terrorism a global threat, Giuliani's campaign could measure just how powerful social issues continue to be in the GOP. "He may be the candidate to test that proposition," says former Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie, now the party's state chairman in Virginia.

Ahead of the 'front-runner'
At least at the moment, Giuliani leads the Republican field, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. He holds a narrow advantage over Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is often identified as the party's front-runner. In January, 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said Giuliani was their likely preference for president; 27% chose McCain. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich was third at 10%.

In a head-to-head contest, Giuliani beat McCain 50%-42%.

Giuliani, who declined to be interviewed for this story, also shows appeal beyond the GOP.
Dubbed "America's mayor" after he led New York City's response to the Sept. 11 attacks, Giuliani had a nearly 4-1 favorable rating among all those polled. McCain had a 2-1 favorable rating, and the rating for Democratic hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton was only a bit more positive than negative.

"I have great admiration for how he handled everything in New York," says Jan Mercieri, an independent married to Littleton's fire chief. She's brought a book profiling first responders who died during 9/11 for Giuliani to autograph before he speaks to the dinner. It's being held at the Mount Washington Hotel here, where the Bretton Woods monetary conference convened after World War II. ("God bless you for your service to our people and God bless America," he writes.)

"I think it touched everybody," she says of his take-charge actions on that day, tears welling in her eyes even now.

As fondly remembered as Giuliani is for responding to Sept. 11, however, most Americans don't know much else about him. Barely one in five Republicans knew that he supports abortion rights and civil unions for same-sex couples, the USA TODAY poll found. Nearly as many thought he was "pro-life" as said he was "pro-choice."

When they were told about his stance on those issues, his star dimmed. One in five Republicans said his views would "rule him out as a candidate" they could support. That included one-third of those who attend church every week, an important base of the GOP that makes up a third of party loyalists.

Another 25% of Republicans said his views made them less likely to support him, nearly double the proportion who said they made them more likely to support him.

Even some Republicans who see Giuliani as a stronger general-election candidate question if he can be nominated. A Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday showed Republicans split evenly over whether Giuliani or McCain had a better chance of winning the nomination, though by 17 percentage points they thought Giuliani had a better shot at defeating the Democratic candidate in November.

"He's a fine guy, and he certainly has a sterling record as mayor of New York," George Lovejoy, 75 and courtly, says the next morning. The former New Hampshire state senator, a real estate agent in Barrington, applauds politely as Giuliani addresses the annual state GOP meeting in Manchester. Could he be the presidential nominee?

"I don't think it's likely," Lovejoy says. He is backing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who now opposes abortion rights after supporting them earlier in his career. "Our strong focus as Republicans has been on social issues as well as tax-and-spend issues. That's what's made us strong."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, calls Giuliani "unacceptable" as a nominee. Conservative Christian leaders haven't targeted him because they assume "he's not going to go anywhere" once the campaign begins in earnest — but Perkins says they're ready to mobilize against him if he seems to gain traction.

Losing his luster?
Giuliani's strategists recognize his vulnerabilities. A campaign memo leaked to the New York Daily News last month and acknowledged as authentic by spokeswoman Sunny Mindel listed some of them: questions about his private-sector businesses, which have made him a millionaire and entangled him with clients from thoroughbred racing to the energy industry. Controversies around his current and former wives, a soap-opera saga played out in public. His stance on social issues, to the left of any major GOP contender since the party adopted an unyielding anti-abortion line in its 1980 platform.

"Probs (problems) that are insurm (insurmountable)?" asks the memo. "Does any of it cause RWG (Giuliani) to lose his lustre?"

In New Hampshire, Giuliani tries a response, portraying himself as a strong leader who can be trusted despite differences he may have with a voter on a particular issue.

"The single most important part of leadership … is to figure out what you believe, figure out what's important, have convictions, stand for something," he says in his speech here, stepping to the side of the podium to get closer to the audience and punching his hand in the air for emphasis. "I would prefer to support for president or head of a corporation, mayor, head of an anything — somebody who stands for something, even if I don't agree with them completely."

He cites a bipartisan trio — Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan — as great presidents who earned support even from those who might have disagreed with them on this or that. "I don't even agree with myself on everything," he jokes.

Famously combative as mayor, he tries to convey a warmer side on the stump. He repeatedly refers to his wife, Judith, a petite woman in a black turtleneck and oversized pearls who smiles from the audience; they walk out of the ballroom hand-in-hand. They were married in 2003 after his messy divorce from Donna Hanover, who says she learned they were separating when he announced it at a news conference. Giuliani's first marriage was annulled after 14 years.
Giuliani has honed his skills as a motivational speaker in considerable demand since 9/11; Forbes magazine estimates he charges $100,000 a speech, though he declines to accept even travel expenses from the New Hampshire group. He wears a tailored pinstriped suit, crisp shirt and glossy blue tie. His manner is conversational and occasionally self-deprecating — mentioning, for instance, that he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth but then adding that he doesn't bring that up in Brooklyn.

"Did you know I was from New York?" he asks to laughter.

Actually, his hometown may turn out to be yet another vulnerability. Not since DeWitt Clinton won the governorship in 1817 has a New York mayor been elected to a higher office. Not even Clinton, the Federalist presidential candidate in 1812, managed to make it to the White House.

Survive and prevail
Giuliani backed away from a tough contest before. In 2000, he had formed an exploratory committee and begun raising money for a Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton but then abandoned it after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He is now recovered.

This time, he's formed an exploratory committee and started fundraising with a goal of $25 million by March 31, when Federal Election Commission reports will provide a comparison among presidential contenders. He's begun hiring campaign staffers in Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the opening caucuses and first primary. He heads this weekend to South Carolina, site of the second primary.

Republicans in the Palmetto State will judge the contenders based on "the entire package, not a single issue," Katon Dawson, South Carolina's Republican chairman, says when asked about Giuliani's views on abortion and gay rights. Still, he adds: "Those are issues important to the core of our party."

A Giuliani game plan might go like this: Finish in the top tier of candidates in Iowa, then win or at least finish second in New Hampshire, a Northeast state with a libertarian streak. (That would mean besting McCain, who won the primary over George W. Bush in 2000, and/or Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts.) Then Giuliani would need to survive in South Carolina, a Deep South state with a solidly conservative electorate.

If all that happens, he could be well positioned for the unprecedented crush of primaries on Feb. 5 that may include California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey.

"We feel very good about the consolidation of primaries on an early date," says Michael DuHaime, a former political director of the Republican National Committee who is poised to run Giuliani's campaign. Contests in those big states would favor candidates with high name identification and deep pockets — that is, candidates like him.

Some Republicans believe Giuliani would be better able than McCain to deal with anti-Washington sentiment and the anti-GOP tide that cost the party control of Congress in November's elections.

"I'll tell you who's going to win the nomination," declares Bill Williams, 72, of Franconia, head of the New Hampshire Rural Development Corp. and a former congressional aide who was attending the Littleton dinner. "It's going to be a non-federally employed individual — a governor or a mayor."

The next day, before heading to Providence for a fundraiser, Giuliani and his wife drop by Blake's Diner in Manchester to shake hands with local residents and share lunch. He orders a pita stuffed with chicken fajita ingredients after a fellow patron recommends it. She gets a bacon cheeseburger.

The reception in New Hampshire has been "encouraging," he tells a few reporters as he leaves.

The retail campaigning demanded in New Hampshire feels "familiar," like a mayor's race. He says Republicans, downbeat after congressional setbacks in November, need the sort of encouragement and optimism that he's ready to provide.

"So why wouldn't you run?" Anita Siegfriedt of Fox News asks.

"That's a good question," he says, and laughs.