Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s video image is scheduled to appear in 39 Iowa homes tonight, via a "virtual" nationwide meeting. Giuliani hasn’t set foot in Iowa since early August, and Giuliani’s Republican rivals raise the idea that he doesn’t intend to actively compete here for Iowans’ vote. Giuliani rejects that.
"No, absolutely not," Giuliani says. "We’ll be in Iowa quite a bit. We’ve been to Iowa nine times this year, including three (days) in August. This month has been devoted, quite frankly, to raising money because we have to report at the end of the week and we want to raise as much money as we possibly can."
According to Giuliani, who just returned from a trip to London, it’s difficult to raise money in July and August so he concentrated on fundraising in the month of September and that kept him off the campaign trail in Iowa and elsewhere.
"We’ve got 11 full-time staff in the state. We have a headquarters in Clive. We have a campaign office in Iowa City," Giuliani says. "Thirty-nine of our house parties are going to be done in Iowa tonight."
There are to be over 500 of those "virtual" house parties around the country this evening, with Giuiliani hooking up by video with each site at 7:30. "The house parties that we’re doing (are) really a way of reaching many, many people at once," Giuliani says.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s campaign claims to have had 35,000 visitors on its website Tuesday during what the campaign dubbed "Vertical Day." Giuliani spoke with Radio Iowa by telephone this morning from New York City, where he has an 11 o’clock (Iowa time) meeting with Iraq’s president.
"I’ll talk about the progress that we would like to see in terms of more stabilization, more progress towards solving some of the basic, underlying problems. I’ll also ask him his view of how things are going," Giuliani said. "When you have one of these meetings, there are things you want to convey, but gosh, you also have to keep your ears open to what they’re telling you about what’s going on within Iraq, how successful has the surge been, what additional things need to be done, what progress have they made, is it all being reported correctly from their point of view in the media or isn’t it."
Giuliani said when people question his foreign policy skills, he points to his meetings with heads of state who visited New York City when he was mayor and when he was responsible for ensuring their safety in his city.
Click on the audio link below to listen to Giuliani’s interview with Radio Iowa.