By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 21, 2008

COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 20 -- Riding the momentum from his weekend victory in South Carolina, John McCain turned his attention Sunday to Florida and the high-stakes primary there that will test whether the Arizona senator can consolidate support among Republican voters and take control of the GOP nomination battle.

The Jan. 29 contest in Florida will be the first Republican primary closed to independent voters, who have provided McCain with his margins of victory in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. A victory, strategists agreed, would stamp McCain as the front-runner in what has been a muddied Republican race and give him a clear advantage heading toward Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Leaving South Carolina on Sunday, McCain at first seemed hesitant to adopt the mantle of Republican leader. "I don't know how to define a front-runner," he told reporters asking him if he believed he was now the candidate to beat in the GOP race.

Minutes later, he changed his mind. Asked about critical comments from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, McCain shot back with a grin, "When someone hasn't run a primary, I can understand why they would attack the front-runner."

Florida has played a pivotal role in the past two general elections and now is poised to help determine who the Republicans will send into the main event this November. The primary looms as a potential showdown in the GOP nomination battle not only because of its size and importance but because it will be the first this year in which all the leading candidates are competing.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has won Nevada's caucuses and the Michigan primary in the past week, sees Florida as a potential breakthrough for his once-battered candidacy and is pouring more of his personal fortune into the state in an effort to deny McCain a victory.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, after a loss to McCain in South Carolina, looks to Florida as perhaps a last opportunity to show that his Iowa caucus victory at the start of the nominating season was not a fluke. A second consecutive Southern loss would be especially costly for the underfunded Huckabee.

But what makes Florida most different from the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina is the presence of Giuliani as a full-fledged participant. The onetime national front-runner has finished far back in the Republican pack this year -- behind Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in Iowa, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina. But Giuliani has been parked in Florida for several weeks and has made the primary the critical test for his candidacy.

Whether former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee will be competing at all remains a question mark after his third-place finish in South Carolina, the state he was hoping would give him his first breakthrough of the year.

There was considerable speculation that Thompson would quit the race if he did not do well in South Carolina, but aides said Sunday that no decision had been made. "We are in the process of assessing the state of the campaign, but as of this point no decisions or plans have been made one way or the other," spokesman Todd Harris said.

Florida offers a large and complex battleground for the Republican candidates. A full complement of television ads would run at least $3 million between now and the primary, perhaps more, according to strategists in the state. No candidate, not even the wealthy Romney, will be able to spend so freely.

Romney has ordered up about $1 million in TV commercials, and an adviser said more might be bought depending on the state of the race. McCain's campaign has promised to counter with a seven-figure buy of its own. The Giuliani team expects to be competitive with McCain on television but not with Romney. Huckabee's hand-to-mouth campaign will struggle to stay abreast of the others.

Geographically, Florida is a series of mini-nations. Giuliani hopes to capitalize on retirees from the Northeast who now live in South Florida. Huckabee will look to the Panhandle and its Southern complexion for the votes of religious and social conservatives, but McCain sees significant potential support there as well because of the concentration of military veterans.

The main battleground is likely to be the corridor between Tampa-St. Petersburg and Orlando, which all candidates will be plying over the next nine days.

Florida will award 57 delegates on a winner-take-all basis next week, the most of any state to date. The Republican National Committee penalized the state, cutting its delegate slate in half, because officials moved up the date of the primary. But by the time of the national convention this summer, it is possible that all 114 delegates will be awarded to the winner.

Recent polls have shown McCain with a slender lead over Giuliani, followed closely by Romney and Huckabee. But the campaigns expect to reassess the state of play over the next few days as the effects of South Carolina and, to a lesser extent, Nevada are felt in the Sunshine State.

McCain has yet to clearly win the Republican vote in any contest this year. In South Carolina, he and Huckabee evenly divided GOP voters. The senator's margin came from independents, who represented one-fifth of the vote. The same pattern occurred in New Hampshire, where McCain and Romney evenly split Republicans and McCain won by a big margin among independents. In Michigan, Romney decisively won Republicans on his way to victory there.

"We've proven that we can win among Republicans and appeal to conservatives," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said. "Given that it is a closed primary, John McCain is not going to be able to find refuge in independent voters as he did in New Hampshire and South Carolina."

"We certainly did a lot better than Governor Romney did among Republicans in the first contest in the South," McCain strategist Steve Schmidt responded. "We feel good about how Senator McCain is performing across all bands of the Republican Party."

McCain advisers see a two-person race against Romney developing in Florida. They believe Giuliani will begin to fade, as he has in other states and nationally. But they know the stronger Giuliani's support, the more difficult it will be for McCain to win the state because the two candidates draw from similar pools of voters.

Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager, acknowledged the significance of Florida for his candidate. "We've made no secret about the importance of this state," he said. "We've always known this would be the most critical stretch."

But he said he expects the race to remain wide open through Feb. 5, when 21 states hold Republican contests.

DuHaime also tweaked McCain over his dependence on independent voters, saying, "John McCain hasn't won a primary yet without the help of independent voters, so coming into a closed primary is a complicating factor."

He said differences between McCain and Giuliani on President Bush's tax cuts, immigration and campaign finance reform will shape the debate between the two.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Giuliani sounded one of those themes in challenging McCain's credentials as an economic conservative. "I am the strongest fiscal conservative in the race, and I have a record of supporting tax cuts," he said. "John voted against the Bush tax cuts, I think on both occasions, and sided with the Democrats."

McCain responded later that he was supporting Republican tax cuts when the mayor was backing a Democrat for governor of New York -- a reference to Giuliani's endorsement of Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki in 1994.

Romney, who plans to focus on economic issues, also took aim at McCain on "Fox News Sunday," saying his own experience and business background can fix both the ailing economy and a politically paralyzed Washington.

"If people want somebody who has been in Washington all their life and understands Washington's ways and has been part of the Washington scene for a quarter of a century, then John McCain will be their person," he said.

McCain, in an interview with CNN, dismissed questions about the breadth and depth of his support. "I got more votes than anybody else, and it says that I got it from across the spectrum from all over the state," he said.

Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.