Missing in Action?

Giuliani has shelled out $2.5 million for New Hampshire campaign ads and, according to his press secretary Maria Comella, spent 41 days campaigning around the state. Those numbers put Giuliani slightly behind New Hampshire front runner John McCain, who has spent $4 million on campaign ads and logged 46 days on the campaign trail New Hampshire.

But Giuliani's daily schedule has been consistently less vigorous. This is partially due to an illness that at one point forced the campaign to turn its plane around in midair to drop Giuliani off at a St. Louis hospital. Giuliani attends fewer events than McCain, and his late-afternoon/evening appearances are often listed—even on the morning of—as "TBA." Giuliani also grants significantly less press access. Reporters following McCain complain that they can't shut the senator up, while those who trail Giuliani say he is nearly impossible to nail down. Of course, Giuliani has a long history of keeping the media at arm's length, notably during his tenure as mayor of New York. But having blown off Iowa and ceded the headlines to rivals Mike Huckabee, McCain and Romney, Giuliani arguably needs all the free press he can get.

Chris Henick, a former deputy to Karl Rove who now serves as a senior Giuliani adviser, says, "We've dug our ditch, and we're going to live in it and thrive in it." Henick views New Hampshire as a more or less lost cause. Michigan, California and Florida, on the other hand, are a different story—especially Florida, which the Giuliani camp is counting on to jump-start his momentum heading into Super-Duper Tuesday, Feb. 5.

"There's one player in baseball who squats outside of the diamond, and that's the catcher. [When the smaller primaries are over] and all the players all run out, we're already at the plate," says Henick, referring to prize states like Florida.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, CNN's last preprimary poll put Giuliani a distant third, with 14 percent. McCain and Romney polled 31 and 26 percent, respectively.

Given Giuliani's embarrassing sixth-place Iowa finish, one might expect the campaign to be worried about its lackluster New Hampshire numbers. But Giuliani's New Hampshire state chairman, Wayne Semprini, says, "We'd love to come in second or first, but considering the amount of time and money that the other candidates have spent here, given those perameters … [we're] going for third place."