Giuliani moving toward White House bid?

NEW YORK — After more than four years of enjoying private life, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is taking several steps that could lay the groundwork for a presidential bid, strengthening alliances with Republicans nationwide and especially with conservative leaders of the party.

Giuliani's advisers say he will decide around the end of the year whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

It is a decision that will not be made easily: Giuliani believes that his support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control would make winning the nomination difficult, according to several friends and former City Hall aides. Some of those people, who were granted anonymity to describe conversations with the former mayor, say they have told him not to give up his comfortable new way of life for a campaign that might end in failure.

Yet Giuliani remains popular across the Republican spectrum because of his leadership during 9/11 — a role that many Americans were reminded of Thursday when he testified as a government witness at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be tried in an American courtroom in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11.

Giuliani's advisers are only now starting to talk openly about the outlines of a possible national bid, but they say he could enter the race at the start of 2007, or even later, and still assemble a team and raise tens of millions of dollars in a relatively short time.

Giuliani has been amassing political chits by raising money for candidates in politically important states, like California, Iowa, Michigan and New Jersey. He is buddying up to conservatives in tough re-election fights, like Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; the two men are scheduled to attend a fund-raising event and campaign together in two weeks. Instead of raising money for himself, Giuliani is exerting his political muscle to help Republicans keep control of Congress this year, headlining a major fund-raising affair for Senate candidates in May.

"A lot of the events we've done have really laid the groundwork to go, if we need to, to raise money nationally," said Anthony V. Carbonetti, Giuliani's political point man, who is already planning campaign stops for July and August. "We really have a road map."

At the same time, Giuliani is trying to deal with his liberal social views that are abhorrent to many Republican voters who wield great influence in the nominating primaries.