Giuliani Will Spend "Almost Everything" On Florida
CORAL SPRINGS, FLA. -- Rudy Giuliani says his campaign will spend nearly all of the cash on hand they have left on the upcoming Florida primary contest.
Asked if he will have any money following the January 29th vote, the mayor said, "We'll have some, but frankly, you know, Florida is real important to us, so we're gonna put if not everything into Florida, almost everything."
The campaign announced that as of December 31, they had $7 million on hand for the primaries.
Giuliani took questions from the press today about reports that senior members of his staff have been asked to go without salaries for January and possibly upcoming months. Giuliani denied it was a request, and said staffers did it out of their own volition.
"Well some people volunteered to do it," said Giuliani. "We didn't ask anyone to do it. Some people volunteered to do it 'cause they wanted to stretch out the money. We've got quite a bit of money and they wanted to make sure we had even more money for the end of this situation in Florida, so that we could have I guess enough on the air or whatever."
What about fears this might raise in donors over the next month?
"They have to look at our balance sheet and they'll see that we have a great deal of money -- we put that out the other day."
The campaign also announced that National Finance Co-Chairman for the Giuliani campaign, Roy Bailey, has not held that position for a month and is volunteering elsewhere in the campaign.
On the question of whether Giuliani, who boasts as being "the most fiscally conservative candidate" had overspent his campaign, Giuliani responded, "No, just the opposite, we don't have any debt, we don't have any liabilities of any kind. We have a good deal of money in the bank, probably more than just about any other campaign. This was an effort to try and stretch dollars even further. So it's just the opposite, we're one of the most fiscally conservative of the campaigns, certainly on the Republican side."