By Kevin Zwick
Staff Writer

On January 29, 2008, Senator John McCain(R-Arizona) won the Republican Florida Primary, propelling him to front of the Republican Presidential race, while Rudy Giuliani’s campaign comes to a close.

Rudy Giuliani’s campaign strategy was built around the notion of a large majority of early absentee ballots in Florida. At first, he was the leading Republican candidate, but then he began to fade out of the spotlight, and began a slow decline to the back of the pack. His decline was due to the fact that campaigned very lightly in the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire and Michigan primaries.

While he was in Florida campaigning, the other Republican candidates were in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan, boosting their campaigns and actually getting to know the people.

“Giuliani’s problem was in his flawed strategy,” said Pat Buchanan, a political analyst for MSNBC. This flawed campaign was based on focusing the majority of the campaign resources to Florida campaigning, where it was said whoever wins Florida, wins the nomination for president.  “Why they chose to put all their eggs in the Florida basket shows someone wasn’t thinking, because all of the conversations that were going on in other states, Rudy was left out,” said Dr. Thomas Jackson, professor of Political Science at Marywood University.

Many of Giuliani’s supporters in Florida were made up of mostly New York City transplants, residents of Florida who moved to Florida to either retire or for some other reason. These people already knew Giuliani from when he was Mayor of New York City. Most importantly, these transplants knew Giuliani as a person.  “Another problem for Giuliani was the people knew of him from his role in 9/11, but when actually met him in person, it hurt him,” said Pat Buchanan.

Throughout Giuliani’s failing campaign, Senator John McCain said that he was inspired by Rudy Giuliani’s campaign. Now that Giuliani is out of the race, he will endorse John McCain for the Presidential nomination.