Giuliani's Florida Gamble

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) began running a new radio ad in Michigan featuring a man who was a prisoner of war with him in Vietnam.

By contrast, Giuliani is letting the presidential campaign come to him, a strategy that has never been tried before and that is fraught with risks. Advisers hope he will win the Sunshine State's Jan. 29 primary and vault himself back into White House contention before 22 states hold primary contests a week later.

New York and New Jersey will vote that day, as will several other big states such as California that Giuliani believes he can win. If all goes according to plan, he will have amassed a significant lead in the hunt for delegates by the end of Feb. 5.

But Giuliani has been in a downward spiral from the first-place position he held for months in national polls. In the most recent CNN-Opinion Research survey, he had the support of 18 percent of likely Republican voters, in third place behind Huckabee, at 21 percent, and McCain, at 34 percent.

Despite those numbers, if there is a year that Giuliani's approach could work, it may be this one, when none of his rivals are running the table. Once dominant in Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney is fighting for his political life. McCain, Huckabee and Thompson are battling in South Carolina, a contest that could be fatal to Thompson's hopes and highly damaging to Huckabee's.

Giuliani is spending about $700,000 a week on television commercials in Florida, and is the only Republican candidate on the air in the state since Romney decided to shift his focus to Michigan and do battle there with McCain. In his most recent ad, Giuliani practically pleads with the state's voters to ignore the media coverage of his rivals while they wait.

"With pundits and politicos handicapping the campaign like the Super Bowl, it's easy to lose sight of what's at stake," the announcer says. "An economy in peril. A country at war. A future uncertain. The media loves process. Talking heads love chatter. But Florida has a chance to turn down the noise and show the world that leadership is what really matters."

Other campaigns are beginning to notice Giuliani's increased activity in the state. In a memo to supporters yesterday, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis announced the creation of a Florida Victory Fund and said, "We're working hard to build support in Florida."

If Republicans in Florida ignore the past month of wall-to-wall coverage of his challengers, Giuliani could turn a win there into momentum that vaults him back to the front of the pack, where he was for much of 2007.

But first, he has to wait.

"Early on in the campaign, when you saw the possibility that only one person was going to take all the early primaries, I thought it looked like a very stupid strategy," said Brett Doster, a Republican consultant in Florida who is not working for any of the candidates. "He was in a position of standing back and letting this wave of momentum wash over him."

Now, though, Doster said he is having second thoughts.