Free Republic

BOCA RATON, Fla. A flood of early ballots from Republican voters, has already exceeded the turnout in the contests in Iowa, NH and Nevada. As of Friday night, nearly 400,000 party Republicans had cast early votes, either in person or by mail......There were 3.8 million Republicans qualified to vote Tuesday. That offers a glimmer of hope to Giuliani's calculated effort to get his supporters to vote early hoping to bank a substantial number of votes before losses in other early states raised questions about his viability and his competitors arrived in the state, driving down his numbers in the polls....

GIULIANI PARTNERS LLC 5 Times Square Confidential memo to file From R. Giuliani July 15, 2002 In one week I bought a new 3100-square-foot Central Park apartment for $5.25 million and dumped Donna for $6.8 million, plus the old apartment, child support, taxes, and legal fees. Not bad for a guy who made a measly $294,000 in 1992—my last year of private employment before becoming mayor. I'll make $8 million this year just for delivering my already oldie but goodie, the stock September 11 speech. Without 9-11, I'd be lucky to get a date at the Guy Molinari Republican Club...

Rudy Giuliani's toughness edged toward ruthlessness and became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. NYC spent at least $7M settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years. After unidentified city workers complained of pressure to hand contracts to Giuliani-favored organizations, investigators examined not the charges but the leakers' identity. “There were constant loyalty tests: ‘Will you shoot your brother?’ ” said Marilyn Gelber, environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. “People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes.” Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Koch and Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr....

For 50 days, Giuliani had the Sunshine State nearly to himself........he’s sucked up to Miami's Cuban vote, pandered in Cape Canaveral about the space program, tried to scare retirees in South Florida. There he is riding in a fire truck in a Miami parade, trailed by angry firefighters who blame him for multiple failures when NY was attacked.......in the Panhandle, he's the consummate Yankees fan trying to look down-home on the Redneck Riviera. Yet, the more they see of Giuliani, the more his poll numbers tank...... Rudy’s campaign is in meltdown. Amazing how much voters bring up his tawdry personal...

DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. - Rudy Giuliani splurged on Florida, lavishing time and money on a high-risk gamble that the state would vault him to the Republican presidential nomination. Five days before his make-or-break primary, all that last year's national front-runner has to show for the love he's given the Sunshine State is a diminished standing. "We are gaining support. I think you'll see that over the next few days," Giuliani insisted Wednesday, hours before a new poll showed him trailing John McCain and Mitt Romney. Florida was supposed to be "Rudy Country." His game plan called for playing down earlier-voting...

Giuliani's must-win Florida strategy is in trouble.... McCain moved up 9 points, supported by 22% likely GOP primary voters, compared to Giuliani's 20%, down 8 points (Quinnipiac). Huckabee and Romney got 19%..... Giuliani's poor performance in Iowa and NH is negatively impacting his candidacy........"he staked his entire campaign on winning Florida and that lead has evaporated," the pollster said. But there is a silver lining - 59%, including many Northeast transplants and Cuban-Americans, swear they will not abandon him.......only 42% of McCain's backers say they'll stick with him.

HAVANA PARTY: Giuliani aboard a vintage firetruck at the Three Kings Parade in Miami's Little Havana. A fading, cash-strapped Giuliani...all but admitted a defeat here could doom his candidacy. Giuliani courted the influential Hispanic vote in South Florida. His base of support is Florida's Northeastern transplants, and Cuban-Americans. His support has eroded here following poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire and he is battling a cash crunch ....about a dozen top staffers will not be paid this month to help preserve resources for Florida, and Super Tuesday.

Giuliani's top campaign staffers are working without pay and his national finance co-chairman has stepped down - signs of his presidential campaign's turmoil and financial difficulties........just weeks before the make-or-break Florida primary Jan. 29. The Giuliani campaign announced it had $7M to spend in the primary as of Dec. 31. But that doesn't include millions of dollars in TV ads since then..... national finance co-chair, Roy Bailey, has stepped down and is working at Rudy's firm Giuliani Partners.

McCain's NH victory was the best news for Giuliani's wacko strategy of hiding in the dugout until the final innings....the Republican nom remains completely up for grabs and probably will remain so for several more weeks. If McCain is the nominal front-runner, the Palmetto State - where voters have very long memories and carry very long grudges - will rise up and destroy him on illegal immigration. It is altogether possible that a sure conservative like Fred Thompson wins SC, further flattening the field. And a flattened field heading into Florida is the only way Giuliani can hope his strange...

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - Giuliani's support here has plummeted into single digits....according to new surveys released yesterday. A Reuters poll shows the ex-mayor capturing just 8% of the vote - tied for fourth place with Thompson and Ron Paul. An MSNBC poll shows Giuliani tied with Paul for fifth place with a measly 5% of the vote - near the bottom of the pack. "Where has he been? He stopped showing up," said conservative activist Jamie Johnson, who runs a radio station. Giuliani did not air a single TV ad in Iowa, and his 15 trips here were far...

....an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney. A private corporate interest commissioned a phone-bank survey of 15,000 Iowans who will attend Republican caucuses Jan. 3....showed Romney with 30%, Huckabee 26%. Sen. John McCain was third with 12%, Rudy Giuliani fourth at 9%. Fred Thompson had 1%, with slightly fewer votes than Rep. Ron Paul (also at 1%)....McCain was the leading second-choice candidate for both Huckabee and Romney voters.

--SNIP--Giuliani is finally suffering from the natural gravitational pull of his messy personal life (as mayor, he financed a security detail for his mistress) and his ideological heterodoxy (especially on social issues).......it has dragged him down to a level where it is no longer an invisible force. His supporters thought that he'd bump up in the NH polls once he started advertising. But since Nov 10 he's spent more than Romney and McCain, and Giuliani's numbers have, if anything, declined slightly. Pundits speculated that the WOT was the new social issue, more important to Republicans than abortion or gay marriage.........over...

--SNIP--Giuliani's messy personal life is a big turnoff to women voters....causing the public humiliation of his second wife, tax-paid bodyguards for his girlfriend and a frosty relationship with his kids: It all makes wives and moms around the country skeptical of putting him in the White House. "If he can't control his personal life, I just don't see how he can control the country," said a Lucas, Kan housewife. Fifty % of women overall - and 48% of GOP women - said that Giuliani dumping second wife Donna Hanover at a 2000 press conference would make them less likely to...

Giuliani admits his personal faults in a major speech today....according to excerpts released by his campaign. The thrice-married ex-mayor will say, "If you are looking for perfection, you are not going to find it in me." Giuliani's speech comes on the heels of unflattering media coverage......Team Rudy selected Florida for his address because the state's Jan. 29 primary is considered his "firewall" should he lose several early-voting states.

Late in his tenure as mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani billed tens of thousands of dollars in travel expenses to little-known city agencies as he was beginning an extramarital affair, a political Web site reported Wednesday. The report, on the Politico Web site, cited documents obtained under the New York State Freedom of Information Law. But it was unclear from those documents whether Giuliani allocated those travel costs, from 1999 through 2001, to obscure city offices in an attempt to conceal expenses associated with the relationship or for some accounting purpose. The administration of Giuliani's successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg,...

Giuliani stammered his way through a defense of tax dollars spent on a security detail for his girlfriend when he was New York's married mayor. "There were threats; they had to be responded to," Giuliani told NBC's "Meet the Press"....."Judith didn't particularly want it, but it was done because they took the view that it was serious and it had to be done this way." Giuliani has been dogged about how much his extramarital affair cost the city.

It's not easy keeping track of Rudy Giuliani's shag-related expenditures of taxpayer money while mayor of New York. For one thing, it's impossible to get a total of the amount spent guarding the mayor's then-girlfriend. And the available records are spotty at best. But we gave it the ol' TPM try. So here, without further ado, is our timeline. 5/99 -- Judith Nathan and Giuliani meet at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar on the Upper East Side. 7/3/99 -- NYPD Officers charge the city for gas to "accompany the mayor to Southampton." 7/31/99 -- Four officers accompanying Giuliani stay at...

Giuliani tried to ride out new questions over taxpayer-funded chauffeur police services witnesses said were provided to Judith Nathan well before the married mayor revealed his extramarital involvement in 2000..... asked about Nathan's city-funded wheels, Giuliani non-answered "Thank you," and "Have a good night." Nathan's police escorts were thought to have begun in December 2000, after Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said she was threatened and needed around-the-clock protection. (Giuliani hid security detail and travel expenses for Nathan in obscure city agencies.) "If Nathan was provided police protection prior to their being a security-threat assessment, it probably was an illegal use...

Presidential Candidate Giuliani's Partner Linked to Bribery Case When Hank Asher reached into the bag and pulled out the two $15,000 gold Cartier watches, the holiday crowd at Carmine's restaurant on 44th Street in Manhattan noticed, patrons recalled. Later, so did the U.S. attorney in Orange County, Calif., and soon yet another of Rudy Giuliani's business partners was embroiled in a bribery case. Asher, identified by the initials H.A. in Overt Act 59 of a federal grand jury indictment against Orange County sheriff Michael Carona, had handed the diamond-encrusted Cartier baubles to the wives of the sheriff and his deputy,...

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani have seen their once-formidable leads sliced in a new national poll - she lost 11 points while Giuliani plummeted by 9 points in the last month. Clinton dropped to 39% from 50%.....Giuliani dropped to 25% from 34% over the same period.