Florida is crucial for Giuliani

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani – trailing in the polls, eager for his first primary win – said today that if he fails to win Florida’s GOP primary he will reassess his candidacy.

“I expect to win it,” he said, as public opinion polls showed him trailing. “You don’t contemplate losing it. That isn’t something you do on the day of a primary.” But “we’ll make a decision” Wednesday morning, he told reporters.

Estimating that Florida 500,000 voters have already cast their ballots in early, mail-in voting, Giuliani also predicted that those votes could be his margin of victory. “We think we have a lead in those votes and that will tell the story, I believe, tonight,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

And no matter what happens in Florida, he told NBC’s Matt Lauer, he plans to go to California for Wednesday night’s GOP debate from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, the Politico and CNN. California is among the 22 states holding primaries or caucuses on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Despite Giuliani’s status last year as the GOP front-runner, and despite investing time and money in the Sunshine State, the Florida race has turned into a verbal slugfest between Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as they battle for momentum. After a week of hurling accusations of “flip-flopping” at each other, Romney and McCain tried to cool their rhetoric as Florida voters streamed to the polls in what officials described as a heavy turnout.

McCain, responding to Romney’s charge that he is a liberal, laughed and told reporters that the accusation is a “desperation” tactic.

Romney, asked on MSNBC about McCain’s charge that he supported a date for withdrawal from Iraq, called it “a false accusation” from a perennial candidate for president “who looks like he’s going to lose tonight.”

But Romney saved his harshest words for Democrats.

“You hear someone like Barack Obama say he’s going to bring change to Washington and change to America,” he said of the Democratic senator from Illinois. “The truth is I think he would change America, just not the way you want it to change.”

He added that he disagreed with former Sen. John Edwards’ remarks about two Americas.

“I … don’t think we’ll have to listen to [him] too much longer,” Romney said, to laughter and cheers.

Democrats, meanwhile, were stumping in various Super Tuesday states.

Obama, still basking in the glow of an endorsement from Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, suggested that the Kennedy embrace could help among certain constituencies, such as Hispanic Americans. “I have to make my case, but obviously Ted Kennedy helps me get some people to listen who might not otherwise have listened,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today Show.”

And former President Bill Clinton, whose comments about Obama were said to have angered Kennedy, gave a speech in New Jersey, another Feb. 5 state, in which he avoided further controversy.

At Camden County College, Clinton said that his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was “a proven change agent.” Detailing her life history in working with children, the former president said his wife “was always making changes in other peoples’ lives.”

Saying he would be campaigning for Hillary Rodham even if they’d never married, Clinton said, “She will handle whatever happens and still keep her commitments to you … not just to make history but to build the future.”

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com