Rudy's Last Florida Swing

Will Florida make or break the former New York mayor's presidential bid?

ByABC News
January 29, 2008, 11:12 AM

POMPANO BEACH, FL <br> Jan. 29, 2008 &#151; -- He's tan, calm, and smiling, and his bus says "Tested. Ready. Now." Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is making his last campaign swing through Florida, a state he set up as make-or-break and which supporters fear will break him today.

"That first fundraiser," state Representative Carl Domino, Giuliani's Palm Beach County coordinator, nostalgically says to the former mayor at the campaign's Broward County headquarters. Domino hosted a fundraiser for Giuliani in his home on March 31.

"You've been there from the beginning," Giuliani says, giving him a hug.

But Domino seems resigned to an imminent end to the campaign. "Obviously the polls show the momentum is with two other people," Domino tells ABC News, referring to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. "When you get in politics, sometimes you pay attention to such things."

Domino says he thinks Giuliani's strategy of largely bypassing the early states and focusing everything on the Sunshine State was a mistake.

"You gotta show you can compete," he says, adding that decent showings in New Hampshire and South Carolina would have helped Giuliani immeasurably. "He didn't have to win, he just had to be competitive," Domino says. "But they didn't ask me."

Giuliani grabs one of the cell phones volunteers are using for phone banking.

"Javier asked me to call and see if you'd go out and vote for me," Giuliani says to the voter on the other end. "You will?"

He sounds almost surprised.

Actor Jon Voight Giuliani's Chuck Norris is nearby, smiling and looking trim.

"So, whaddaya think, Jon?" Giuliani asks.

"This is the best-looking group I've seen," Voight says.

Just a few feet away, two Giuliani supporters – matronly women from the area – are conspicuously talking about whom they will support next.

"Romney's better than McCain," Diane Bee, a Coconut Creek resident and a member of the Broward County Republican Party, tells Egle Calvino of Coral Springs. "I don't know what I'm gonna do if that McCain gets in there!"