With his plan for
winning the Republican presidential nomination riding
largely on a big Florida victory at the end of the month,
Rudy Giuliani asked an evangelical congregation for
prayers instead of votes Sunday and quoted scripture
to evoke a message of hope and perseverance.
''I'm not coming
here to ask for your vote,'' he said. ''That's up to you
and it's not the right place. But I am coming here to ask
you for something very special and more important: I'm
asking for your prayers.''
While other
Republican candidates are focused on Tuesday's Michigan
primary, Giuliani is following a strategy of pushing for a
January 29 victory in Florida he hopes will propel him
toward a dominant showing on February 5, when more
than 20 states hold primaries and caucuses, and then
on to the nomination for the November election.
Once a strong
front-runner in national polls, the former New York City
has fallen well behind the three candidates jockeying for a
victory in Michigan, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and
Mike Huckabee.
The former New
York City mayor has made conservative Christian
Republicans nervous with some of his more liberal views --
including his support for abortion rights, tolerance
for gays, and gun control.
''I've faced odds
that were at times seemingly impossible, situations
where people had given up hope, but we didn't listen to the
doubters, we didn't listen to the naysayers,''
Giuliani told several thousand worshippers at El Rey
Jesus church in Miami.
''Fear not, be
strong, and of good courage,'' he added, quoting the
Bible. The church, with has a congregation of 10,000 people,
was his first stop on a three-day bus tour through
Florida.
Giuliani's
Florida bus tour -- expected to cover nearly 700 miles by
the end of the day Tuesday -- comes on the heels of
word last week that a dozen senior staffers are giving
up their paychecks this month, which some have read as
a sign that the onetime front-runner is struggling with
a cash shortage.
Giuliani and his
aides, however, have dismissed suggestions the campaign
is running into money trouble.
''We're in good
shape,'' he told reporters Sunday. (Sara Kugler, AP)
