MIAMI — Sen. John McCain won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida primary Tuesday night, seizing the upper hand in the Republican presidential race ahead of Super Tuesday and lining up a quick endorsement from soon-to-be dropout Rudy Giuliani.
“It shows one thing: I’m the conservative leader who can unite the party,” McCain said after easing past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for his first-ever triumph in a primary open only to Republicans.
“We have a ways to go, but we’re getting close” to the nomination, he said later in an appearance before cheering supporters.
The victory was worth 57 Republican National Convention delegates for McCain, a winner-take-all haul that catapulted him ahead of Romney in that category.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was the Democratic winner in a contest that awarded no delegates, which the national party stripped as punishment for the state moving up its primary.
Romney, who has spent millions of dollars of his personal fortune to run for the White House, vowed to stay in the race.
“At a time like this, America needs a president in the White House who has actually had a job in the real economy,” the former businessman told supporters in St. Petersburg.
Giuliani deflated
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, ran third. It was his best showing of the campaign, but not nearly good enough for the onetime front-runner who decided to make his last stand in a state that is home to tens of thousands of transplanted New Yorkers.
Several officials said Giuliani intended to endorse McCain today in California.
Giuliani’s friendly relationship with McCain extended even to this week, when Giuliani flatly refused his aides’ advice to attack McCain directly, sources said, even though McCain was standing between him and a victory in Florida, which Giuliani himself had said was a must-win state if he was to have any hope of becoming president this year.
Appearing before downbeat supporters in Orlando, with not even two-thirds of the votes tallied, Giuliani delivered what sounded like a valedictory for his campaign. Giuliani repeatedly spoke of his effort in the past tense as his wife, Judith, stood to his side, bearing a stiff smile.
“Win or lose, our work is not done because leaders dream of a better future and then they help to bring it into reality,” Giuliani said. “The responsibility of leadership doesn’t end with a single campaign.”
Giuliani pursued an unconventional strategy that ultimately proved his undoing. After some preliminary efforts, he abandoned the races in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that have traditionally launched White House winners, and chose instead to focus almost entirely on Florida. His support collapsed after he began racking up a series of unimpressive finishes in those other races.
Comeback kid?
The victory was another step in one of the most remarkable political comebacks of recent times. McCain entered the race the front-runner, then found his campaign out of funds and unraveling last summer as his stands in favor of the Iraq war and a controversial immigration bill proved unpopular.
The war gradually became less of a concern after President Bush’s decision to increase troop deployments began to produce results. McCain also sought to readjust his position on immigration.
By the time of the New Hampshire primary, he had retooled his candidacy and ridden his Straight Talk Express campaign bus to more than 100 town hall meetings. He won in New Hampshire, stumbled in Michigan, but won the South Carolina primary last week, taking first place in the state that had snuffed out his presidential hopes in 2000.
Florida marked the end of one phase of the campaign, the last in a series of single-state contests that winnowed a once unwieldy field.
The race goes national Tuesday — McCain said it would be the closest thing to a nationwide primary as any event in history. Twenty-one states hold Republican primaries and caucuses on Tuesday with 1,023 convention delegates at stake.
Republicans will debate at 5 p.m. today in California, the final such meeting of Republican hopefuls before Super Tuesday. CNN plans to carry the debate live.Florida primary
REPUBLICANS
John McCain: 36 percent
Mitt Romney: 31 percent
Rudy Giuliani: 15 percent
Mike Huckabee: 13 percent
Ron Paul: 3 percent
DEMOCRATS
Hillary Rodham Clinton: 50 percent
Barack Obama: 33 percent
John Edwards: 14 percent
What’s next
Super Tuesday, when 23 states and one territory hold voting contests Tuesday:
n Fifteen states will have Democratic primaries, and seven states plus American Samoa will have Democratic caucuses.
n Fifteen states will have Republican primaries, five states will have Republican caucuses and one state a Republican convention.
n There are 1,681 Democratic delegates and 1,023 Republican delegates to the national presidential nominating conventions up for grabs Tuesday.
n A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, and 1,191 to win the Republican nomination.
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