Now it looks as if he could lose, if he's even still a candidate on February 5th, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Rudy's entire rationale, aside from the "President of 9/11" nonsense, was that he was the Republican that could put large coastal states in play. Now it looks as if he may not even be able to win them in a Republican primary.
For months, the Republican establishment in New York and New Jersey marched nearly in lock step behind Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former hometown mayor they were confident would become their party's nominee for president.
But as Mr. Giuliani has plummeted from first to fourth - or worse - in some national polls, as he finished near the bottom of the pack in the nation's earliest primaries, and as his lead evaporated even in Florida, the state on which he has gambled the most time and money, those Republican leaders are verging toward a grim new consensus:
If Mr. Giuliani loses in the Florida primary on Jan. 29, they say, he may even have trouble defeating the rivals who are encroaching on his own backyard.
...
But if Mr. Giuliani is relegated to a distant second or worse in Florida, even some of his supporters acknowledge that New York's primary one week later would most likely be up for grabs, with Senator John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts being Mr. Giuliani's strongest rivals. Like Mr. Giuliani, both are fielding full delegate slates in all 29 of the state's Congressional districts.
"If he carries Florida, he carries New York," said Fred Siegel, a Cooper Union historian who has served as an adviser to the former mayor and written a largely admiring biography of him. But winning Florida would require "a miraculous comeback," he said, adding: "I wouldn't bet on it."
...
A senior Republican strategist, who is allied with Mr. Giuliani and is working with Republican legislative candidates in New York, said Mr. Giuliani's decision to circumvent the early primaries was a "big gamble" that for the moment looked in danger of failing.
"Who knows if it will work," said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized by the campaign to speak publicly. "But the danger is what you are seeing now. We're obviously concerned."
