The Des Moines Register has reported that Giuliani announced his plans to skip the Iowa republican straw poll. McCain followed hours later.
The former New York mayor first announced his decision this morning. A few hours later, the McCain campaign said the Arizona senator also would skip the event.
Both candidates said they would still compete to win the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a gamble on a "non-traditional" caucus campaign and a first for Iowa.
"In light of today's news, it is clear that the Ames Straw Poll will not be a meaningful test of the leading candidates' organizational abilities, so we have decided to forgo our participation in the event," McCain campaign manager Terry Nelson said.
"John McCain has built a solid grassroots organization in Iowa and intends to win the state's caucuses," Nelson added.
The decision closer to setting the table for the high-profile early Iowa test, albeit without the party's national front-runners taking part.
"We've made a decision as a campaign not to play in any straw polls this year, most notably, obviously, the Ames straw poll," Giuliani's national campaign manager Mike DuHaime said in a Des Moines Register interview today.
"We are 100 percent committed to winning the Iowa caucuses. We're going to take the resources that would have been spent in the straw poll and we're going to dedicate all of them toward organizing for the January caucuses," DuHaime said.
This is code for, "Iowa republicans are too conservative and we don't want to risk a bad showing in a right-wing poll we both are doomed to lose."
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