Giuliani: Early Primaries are “Uncharted Territory”

ABC News’ Jan Simmonds reports:  In the February 5th primary state of Missouri this afternoon, Rudy Giuliani said the early primary schedule and its holiday season impact is like nothing candidates have ever seen before.

"This is unchartered territory for, I think, for presidential candidates, given the fact that the whole primary season starts, you know, three days after New Year’s," Giuliani told reporters in Kansas City.  "It is necessary to do campaigning during the Christmas holiday, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s."

The former New York City Mayor also noted the challenges with a campaign and primary schedule that competes with family interests during the holidays.

"In addition to the religious aspects of it, there’s also, people are obviously more concerned about their families, buying gifts and this is generally a period of time where people aren’t as involved in public affairs," he said.

Invoking his favorite sport, Giuliani also made a baseball analogy about how he needs to navigate the election calendar keeping in mind the importance of the throng of primaries to take place on February 5th.

"A baseball game, you’ve got to play nine innings and whoever gets the most runs at the end of nine innings wins," said Giuliani. "So here, you’ve got to play in 29 primaries. Nobody’s going to win all of them, that’s for sure."

"So our strategy from the beginning has been, an eight, nine inning game," he added. "And as soon as we realized that California was going to be a Feb. 5 primary, we started campaigning in California, and putting a political organization in California. As soon as we realized that Illinois was going to be, we did the same thing in Illinois. Missouri, same thing in Missouri."

Giuliani when on to note that his campaign views it as a "proportionate strategy."

"It means that you recognize the reality: you’re not going to win all of them, you’ve got to win most of them, and most of them are coming on Feb. 5, so you’d better not ignore February 5."

While Giuliani continues to focus on February 5th critics still claim that by not paying as close attention to the early primary contests, such as those in Iowa and New Hampshire, it might make his task that much more difficult come the first Tuesday in February.