GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
In two of the most concrete examples yet this campaign season, we see confirmation that Rudy Giuliani’s strategy is to survive the early primary states and use Florida to catapult him to victory on February 5.
Item 1: Staff for the Giuliani campaign presented a Powerpoint show to Rudy volunteers recently. The second slide of the presentation simply said, “Florida is the firewall.” One of the succeeding slides stated “Giuliani’s strategy is to win delegate rich Florida to catapult him.” This is one of the most overt examples of Rudy’s campaign strategy being made public.
Item 2: Giuliani’s campaign is inquiring about prices of television markets for ad buys - but not in states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina. Rudy wants to buy ads in Illinois, Georgia, Oklahoma, and West Virginia… all of which, as you might have guessed, are holding their primaries on February 5.
One of the most exciting and interesting things about this primary season are the completely different approaches the candidates are taking to it. Romney is focusing on all the early states (as shown in his recent campaigning in Nevada and Wyoming), Rudy is focusing on Florida and the February 5 states, McCain is focusing (partly not by choice) entirely on New Hampshire, and Fred Thompson… well, who knows what Fred’s plan is at this point (I would venture a guess that he would be focusing on South Carolina and Florida, but we’ll see). It will certainly make things interesting.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:02 am
[...] post by MattC and software by Elliott [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 5:48 am
This is factually incorrect. The article you cite notes small media buys in SC, Iowa and NH as well.
August 29th, 2007 at 8:37 am
wisconsin cheese - “small scale radio buys” compared to large market television buys led me to write that he is focusing on the Feb 5 states. I don’t think that is factually incorrect. Rudy’s strategy is clearly to just survive the early states by spending as little time and money in them as possible, and then win it all on Feb 5. Note that I am not judging his strategy - given the new political calendar, it just might work and he will be hailed as a forward-thinking genius for being the only candidate on either side of the aisle to play the primary game this way.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I really think it is a losing strategy. It will hurt him in the end. it almost never works, but i think it is all he has and he realizes it.
it will be exciting either way.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Rudy needs a firewall–desperately. But if he doesn’t carry any states before January 29th, it’s not even certain that he can carry Florida. You can’t overestimate the force and power of early momentum. When I was getting my degree in economics we learned that everything has its own built-in multiplier effect (one of Keynes’s fallacies). But the multiplier effect of winning a string of early primaries is gargantuan. He should aim for South Carolina and hope that the SoCon vote there splits between enough other candidates for him to win. It’s his only hope.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I remember being mocked by somebody when I first suggested that this would be Rudy’s strategy. Who’s laughing now? BTW Rudy came in 4th at the Illinois straw poll.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Holy Crap! WHOA! Giuliani’s general strategy is to sweep the Super Tuesday states!??! Stop the presses!
No, but seriously. This is hardly news.
First of all, the Powerpoint you cite was created by Florida volunteers, not by the national Rudy campaign. Florida IS the firewall. And so is Connecticut. And so is California. And so is Illinois. It was just a Powerpoint to energize local volunteers, it’s not some big secret campaign strategy.
So what if Rudy’s making inquiries into media buys in the Super Tuesday states? That doesn’t mean he won’t win any of the pre-2/5 primaries. He’s really been upping the visits to IA, NH, and SC lately and he’s started doing a lot of up-close retail politicking. He’s going to compete in the early states, and anyone who thinks he won’t is deluding themselves.
Stories like these try to fashion this idea that Rudy’s just gonna skip IA and NH and cross his fingers for CA and IL. All they really say is that Rudy’s overall strategy is to lock in the 2/5 states first, and the early states second. May or may not be a bad campaign strategy–I guess we’ll find out. But this is hardly news.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
JS, Ames Straw Polls may be a joke for you, but it matters to those Iowans. It is their largest source of the funds for campaignings of their local republican officals. They take pride in their political actions. There is no way around the taking away the potential source of “3 millions dollars”, as cited by Rudy’s spokeperson, not counting the local businesses’ reveunue. Rudy is finished in IA! He will have to focus on NH just to have something to float on something going into FL.