Could Rudy Giuliani be planning to run for president in 2012 -- by winning a Senate seat in 2010?

Consider: Earlier this afternoon, New York newspapers went gaga over reports that, first, Giuliani had informed political allies he would not run for governor in 2010, and second, that he would run for the Senate instead, against freshman Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Now consider: Giuliani, the ultimate alpha male, is a chief executive. Decision-making is his greatest talent; thoughtful deliberation, not so much. Rapidly assessing options, making decisions, and then taking action is his stock in trade; pondering over weighty arguments, or even engaging in debate, is ... not something for which he is well known.

Moreover, raising money for a campaign for governor of New York would be far, far easier for Giuliani than would raising money for a Senate race -- which, after all, is regulated by federal law, with a relatively low individual maximum contribution, while a governor's contest is regulated by far looser state-level fundraising restrictions.

In my last post, I examined the odd twist to this year's Jon Corzine self-funding drama -- that unlike previous years, Corzine is loaning millions of dollars to his campaign committee, rather than simply donating the funds outright.

This, I explained, could, if Corzine wins reelection next Tuesday, create a massive conflict of interest problem, where virtually every entity in the state capable of writing a $25,000 check to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee could feel pressured to kick in a huge contribution, for the purpose of retiring Corzine's personal debt.

Here's the kicker:

Is Jon Corzine setting himself up for the Mother of All Conflicts of Interest?

A check of Corzine's fundraising reports, on file with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, reveals an odd twist to the story of a man who's now spent more than $130 million of his own money in pursuit of higher office -- he's now looking for payback from his campaign committee after the election.

Corzine's most recent ELEC filings reveal that unlike his campaign efforts in 2000 and 2005, when he simply wrote a personal check and donated it to the campaign, this time around he is writing personal checks and loaning the money to his campaign.

He loaned his campaign $2 million on October 19, $1.2 million on October 26, and another $1.5 million on October 27. Grand total: $4.7 million to date.

Thus, Corzine, if he wins reelection next Tuesday, will be the first New Jersey Governor in anyone's memory to have a personal financial stake in the success of his campaign committee's fundraising.

UPDATED

Barack Obama wants to help Jon Corzine win in New Jersey — so he’s coming back one more time. But will it, in fact, help?

Data from a Monmouth University/Gannett poll, conducted Oct. 15-18, suggests it might not — depending on how you look at it, and who’s doing the looking.

According to the survey, President Obama’s job approval rating in New Jersey is 53 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove. That’s a net plus-14 on the job approval rating. On the face of it, it looks like it would be a good move to bring him in.

But a closer look at the data reveals that among the few undecided voters remaining in the race, his job approval ratings are a bit lower — 44 percent approve, 35 percent disapprove. So that net plus-14 among all likely voters is only a net plus-9 among undecided voters. And his approval rating among those key undecided voters is less than 50 percent. So it looks like it’s still a good idea, but a bit less of one.

With eight days to go in the New Jersey governor's race, this new SurveyUSA poll and this new Eagleton-Rutgers survey make it clear -- independent candidate Chris Daggett, at 19 and 20 percent on the ballot test and climbing, respectively, has moved beyond "spoiler" status into bona fide potential governor territory.

To put Daggett's 19 and 20 percent in context, when former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura pulled off his upset victory in the 1998 governor's race, he polled at 21 percent on Oct. 18 -- and he polled at 27 percent in the last pre-election survey, before closing with 37 percent of the vote on Election Day.

So the question now is, what would it take for Daggett to close the deal and pull off the upset?

Why in the world is Barack Obama going to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds in Hampton Roads next Tuesday?

After reading this bombshell in this morning’s Washington Post — “Deeds ignored advice, White House says” — any words of support from Obama’s mouth to the assembled masses will ring hollow.

The post-mortem blame game is always the worst part of any losing campaign.

And, speaking from experience, I can say with confidence that most practitioners of the fine arts of the campaign would rather lose by a lot than lose by a little — when you get swamped, you realize there was very little you could have done differently to change the outcome, and you can mentally shake off the loss and look forward to the next campaign as soon as you recover from your hangover.

Tonight is the final "televised" debate of the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign.

I put "televised" in quotes because while it is true that it will be televised, very few people will see it -- because the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission chose to pass on the League of Women Voters invitation to joint sponsorship with the ABC television affiliates in New York and Philadelphia, this debate will "air" on Saturday afternoon at 2 PM on Philadelphia's FOX affiliate, and Sunday afternoon on WWOR in the New York market. The debate will be up against college football on Saturday in south Jersey, and on Sunday, the debate will be programmed against a New York Giants football game.

Most people learn about debates not by watching them, but from news coverage afterward. In this case, that dynamic will be amplified.

Well, Chris Christie’s campaign today demonstrated, yet again, its tactical brilliance.

Unfortunately, for Republicans who want to capture the New Jersey’s governor’s office again, it did so at the cost of demonstrating its strategic lunacy.

As anybody who’s paid even the slightest attention to the race over the last few months is now aware, the meta-story of the campaign is that incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine — who, based on upside-down personal favorables and job approval numbers, entered the campaign year trailing in every poll known to man — and was running so far behind just a few weeks ago that there was informed speculation Democrats would try to remove him from the ballot — has now scratched and clawed his way back into a statistical dead heat.

With four weeks left in the campaign, it’s a tossup.

The most disturbing thing about the Sacramento Bee's report that California gubernatorial wannabe Meg Whitman didn't vote for 28 years isn't that she didn't vote for 28 years, it's that her campaign wasn't ready for the accusation that she didn't vote for 28 years.

Not being ready to respond to such a charge is evidence of two major flaws in her campaign's preparation -- to wit, the failure to conduct a comprehensive vulnerability study on their own candidate, combined with the failure to prepare responses to likely attacks.

That the campaign wasn't prepared to respond to accusations about her poor voting record can be adduced from the fact that it took the campaign a full ten days after the story broke to go up with a counter-offensive in the form of a letter of complaint from campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds(late of the McCain for President campaign) to Bee political editor Amy Chance.

But that's not to say the campaign was mum for 10 days.

Today could be a turning point in the New Jersey's governor's race. A new poll out this morning shows the power of money and the danger of not giving the people what they want.

With property taxes that are the highest in the nation, New Jersey voters want to hear a responsible and reasonable plan for getting that under control. They haven't heard one yet from Republican nominee Chris Christie and his lead is shrinking.

With 34 days to go in New Jersey, Christie's lead over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine has been cut from 10 points to four, according to a new survey from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Christie now leads Corzine by just 43-39 percent, with 12 percent of the vote going to Independent candidate Chris Daggett.

On September 1, Christie led Corzine and Daggett by 47-37-7 percent.