Interesting news today that 12 “senior” members of Rudy Guiliani’s campaign staff are not taking their pay for the month of January.

About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are forgoing their January paychecks, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate and last year’s national front-runner.

“We have enough money, but we could always use more money,” said Mike DuHaime, Giuliani’s campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. “We want to make sure we have enough to win.”

At the end of December, the campaign had $12.7 million cash on hand, $7 million of which could be used for the primary, DuHaime said Friday. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped operation and said Giuliani continues to bring in money; several fundraisers are scheduled this week in Florida.

The former New York mayor has yet to win a contest and is counting on a victory in delegate-rich Florida on Jan. 29 to prove his candidacy is viable heading into the multistate contests slated for Feb. 5, where he believes he can prevail in states such as California and Illinois.

Now, what this tells me is that the campaign is running out of money. Rudy had been leading in the polls and raising money in 2007, but, now it seems as if John McCain and Mike Huckabee are taking the lead and running with it. Rudy is concentrating on Florida now.

Over the past few days, Giuliani has moved his handful of paid staffers out of Michigan and South Carolina to Florida, which has emerged as his best shot to re-ignite his campaign.

He also launched two ads in Florida, one of which urged viewers to discount media pundits and their election analyses. The ad seemed as much aimed at voters as it was to fundraisers, who are crucial to the well-being of his campaign at this stage.

I think he needs a big win in Florida if he’s going to be a viable candidate moving forward. If he falters, his fund raising abilities might be very hampered and without any new money coming in, it will be hard to keep going.