Giuliani pins hopes on delegates
ORLANDO, Fla. - Early momentum has been the surefire way to win modern presidential primaries: Emerge as the front-runner in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, then steamroll through later states to become the nominee.
Most of the Republican candidates are betting on this approach for 2008, but Rudy Giuliani is counting on something simpler: delegate math.
His plan is based on changes in Florida and several other big states that are voting earlier than usual.
“There’s never been an election like this before, where you have so many delegate-rich states coming on the heels of the early primary states, like California, like Illinois,” says Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime. “It is clearly a huge amount of delegates that are available Feb. 5 in states where the mayor is leading.”
The former New York mayor dominates in national polls - he leads former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson 29 percent to 19 percent in Associated Press-Ipsos polling released last week. He has big leads, too, in California, New York and Florida.
He trails in polling in Iowa and New Hampshire and Thompson has been challenging his lead in South Carolina surveys.
Which states matter most, earlier ones or later, bigger ones?
In Mount Doro, Fla., Craig Hartwig says he doesn’t take marching orders from the early states.
“We’re not bandwagon people,” he said.
This sentiment led Florida to move its primary from March to Jan. 29, four weeks after Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. Leapfrogging states were punished last week, with party officials cutting their delegates by half, for violating rules against holding primaries before Feb. 5.
The penalties apply to New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming. Iowa will not be penalized because its Jan. 3 caucuses technically are nonbinding.
To win the GOP nomination, a candidate must amass a majority of the 2,380 national convention delegates, most of whom are pledged to support the winner of their states or districts.
After nearly half the states hold nominating contests Feb. 5, Giuliani could hold a commanding lead in the delegate count. Here’s how:
• Giuliani has wide leads in bigger states with more delegates, such as Florida (57 delegates), California (173), New York (101), New Jersey (52) and Illinois (70). He’s expected to capture Connecticut (30) and Delaware (18), too. He campaigned Monday in Missouri (58), another big prize whose senior senator, four-term Republican Kit Bond, recently endorsed Giuliani.
• Even where he doesn’t win on Feb. 5, Giuliani could still come in second and win delegates. Big states in this category might include Georgia (72), Alabama (48) or Tennessee (55). Only a few - New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Missouri among them - award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Other winner-take-all states, Arizona (53) and Utah (36), are expected to go for Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, respectively.
• Guiliani could also pick up delegates in states voting after Feb. 5, including Maryland (37), Ohio (88) and Pennsylvania (74).
Giuliani has a good shot at winning an early state or two as well. He has gained ground on Romney in New Hampshire (12 delegates), where Giuliani ranks second in polls, and has battled Thompson for the lead in South Carolina (24).
But Giuliani’s rivals say that if he fails to capture an early state, his math won’t add up.
Whoever wins Iowa - and Romney has a double-digit lead there - will be viewed as the leader going into the next few contests, officials in other campaigns insist.
“People want to vote for a winner,” says Carl Forti, political director of Romney’s campaign. “And the winner is determined by who is on the front page of the papers and who is perceived as the front-runner after those early primaries.”
History backs up this claim: Democrats John Kerry, Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis all came from behind to win Iowa, then gathered steam to eventually win their party’s nomination.
“If you don’t have momentum going into Feb. 5, forget about it,” says McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.