Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani formally endorsed Marco Rubio today in the Florida Senate race — and took some clear jabs at Crist, who had reportedly backed out of endorsing Rudy in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries.
On a conference call with conservative bloggers, Giuliani said that his endorsement was about more than “whether Charlie Crist broke his word with me on several occasions; he did — that’s the reality, that’s the truth — he did break his word.”
“Whether I did have a history or not with Gov. Crist, in terms of him having broken his word, I’d be supporting Marco in any event,” Giuliani said, calling Rubio “the future of our party.”
Rudy also added: “Marco has shown throughout his career that he can be trusted.”
According to the Mark Halperin/John Heilemann book Game Change, Giuliani ended up banking his whole campaign on winning Crist’s endorsement in the Florida primary, and the two camps had engaged in very close negotiations. And at some point, Rudy appears to have genuinely thought he would get the coveted endorsement.
But in the end, Crist ended up going for John McCain, who was on his way to the Republican nomination. Giuliani ended up getting only 15% of the vote in the Florida primary, and he dropped out the next day.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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