Giuliani out to win a state 'made for him'

DERRY, N.H. -- Rudy Giuliani was telling a roomful of voters about a dream he had three times, when he interrupted himself. "Any psychiatrists here? Want me to lay down and tell you this? You do dream analysis, right?"

Minutes later the former New York mayor had moved on to the "fear of abandonment" his city suffered after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, his people's need to be "embraced," and America's need to buck up because "when you concentrate on your problems so much, as a person or as a society, you sometimes lose perspective."

Suffice it to say Republicans have never had a presidential candidate like this — half Woody Allen, half Rambo and 100% cerebral.

On a trip here last week, Giuliani, 63, was thanked time and again for his leadership after the 9/11 attacks and almost as often for making New York a livable city. Those are the pillars of his candidacy, and he promotes them to the hilt.

"I was mayor of a city that's larger than most states," he told voters at a town meeting here. "Nobody held office as long as I did or in as difficult situations as I was."

"More than any other candidate, I understand the threat that we face," he said later at a gentrified "country store" in Nashua. "I'm the one with by far the strongest record of success. I've had the most executive experience of all."

How's it playing in the state that holds the first primary? It may be too soon to tell. Giuliani began staffing up and running radio ads about three weeks ago. Mitt Romney, former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, has been active for months and leads in most polls.

Arizona Sen. John McCain won the 2000 primary but now is third or fourth. "I'm a Rudy fan," said Don Reese, 68, of Hampstead, a retired business owner. "We're really McCain fans, but McCain seems to be fading and Rudy seems to be coming."

In 2000, 62% of the independents or "undeclareds" who voted in the New Hampshire primary did so in the GOP primary. This time, said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, as many as three-quarters may vote Democratic.

"That's one of the reasons you've seen all of the (Republican) candidates running more traditional Republican campaigns," he said.

That means backing the Iraq war and low taxes. Giuliani also talks up private-sector approaches to health coverage and Social Security and tries to square his accommodating treatment of illegal immigrants as mayor with his current emphasis on border fences and tamper-proof ID cards.

The former mayor also previews a red-meat general-election strategy. He casts potential Democratic rivals as socialist sympathizers who want "a planned economy" and a health care system "that is more Michael Moore, a system like Cuba." They also want to return to "the 1990s when we didn't try to anticipate what terrorists were going to do," he says.

That's not quite how Democrats characterize their ideas on health care (they rely mostly on private insurance) or terrorism (more diplomacy and a bigger military).

Giuliani veers from the conservative line in supporting legal abortion and refusing to sign a no-tax pledge. But Smith said more than half the state's voters don't know anything about the tax pledge and New Hampshire Republicans are more "pro-choice" than the general public nationwide.

"The state's made for him," Smith said of Giuliani. "He hasn't worked it as hard as he should have. Romney has taken advantage of the vacuum."

Several undecided Republicans checking out Giuliani last week said his abortion position was not a disqualifier. "To me, terrorism is the top issue," said Lesley White, 72, a retired accounting clerk from Hampstead. June Butka, 54, of Derry, said she's more interested in how candidates react to crises. "We're not all going to agree on everything," she said.

That was abundantly clear during Giuliani's travels here.

When a man asked him to sign the no-tax pledge, Giuliani said he is "the biggest tax-cutter" in the field but will take only one pledge: "the one you take when you put your hand on the Bible and you swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."

When a woman said she had grandsons and "we want our boys home" from Iraq, he said "we can't allow our frustrations to rule us."

When another woman asked disapprovingly about services for illegal immigrants, he said it's safer to have their kids in school and treat them for communicable diseases. "I'm very proud of those policies. They worked," he said.

Giuliani was a combative mayor who, among other things, forced out the police commissioner who helped slash the city's crime rate and told a ferret owner he needed to see a psychiatrist about his "deranged" attachment to his pet.

That is not his tone these days.

As media cameras whirred at a diner in a Pelham strip mall, Giuliani played with the baby granddaughter of the owner and waxed appreciative of the state's foliage. ("I look forward to campaigning in the fall.") In a Hudson cafe, he discussed his collection of elephant ties and drew his plan for a border fence on a little piece of paper. ("This is not going to be to scale.")

Even a question about his complicated personal life — the annulled marriage to a second cousin, the messy public divorce from his second wife, the estranged children, his teenage daughter's online support (quickly pulled) for Democrat Barack Obama — didn't shake Giuliani's equanimity. Much.

"I love my family very, very much. I would do anything for them," he said after Katherine Prudhomme-O'Brien, 37, a Derry Republican, asked why Americans should be loyal to him when his family is not. "The best thing I can say is, kind of leave my family alone. You know, just like I'll leave your family alone."

The audience burst into applause at that, and again after Giuliani asked to be judged by his public performance. Then he posed for a picture with Prudhomme-O'Brien's daughter.