WASHINGTON – Rudy Giuliani has taken a giant first step toward a 2008 White House run, creating an exploratory committee and beating his pal John McCain to the punch in filing presidential paperwork.
The former New York City mayor registered the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee Inc. on Friday with the New York secretary of state’s office. That just happened to be the day McCain signaled publicly that he wanted to set up a similar organization for his campaign.
Giuliani’s committee is the strongest sign yet that the socially liberal Republican will challenge the Arizona senator in the conservative GOP primaries.
“Mayor Giuliani has not made a decision yet,” his campaign treasurer John Gross said in an e-mail to reporters Monday. “We have taken the necessary legal steps so an organization can be put in place and money can be raised to explore a possible presidential run in 2008.”
By filing with the state of New York, Giuliani dodges the strict requirements of a federally registered committee.
The former mayor’s move didn’t come as a surprise, considering he’d been stumping for dozens of GOP Senate and House candidates, including hopefuls in the key primary states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.
If Giuliani runs and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton throws her hat into the ring, the stage would be set for a rematch of the scrubbed 2000 Senate showdown.
Giuliani and McCain are buddies who often hold court over plates of pasta during Manhattan chat-and-chews, but they are starting to give each other major heartburn. The two are locked neck and neck atop Republican presidential polls; Clinton is the Democratic front-runner.
Giuliani faces serious hurdles as he courts the GOP heartland. He’s a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control urbanite on his party’s left fringe.
After being painted as a liberal by George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries, McCain has sought to prove his right-wing bona fides, recently visiting Jerry Falwell’s university and emphatically describing himself as a “conservative” during an Election Night interview with CNN’s Larry King.
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