"For many good reasons, including asset dispersal, I propose that when it's commissioned in 2009, America's newest carrier, the USS George H. W. Bush, be homeported here, right here in Mayport, Fla.," Giuliani said to a standing ovation.

Giuliani, who skipped early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan is presenting himself as the "pro-Military" candidate in Florida.

"We need a larger Army," Giuliani said. "Ten new combat brigades at least and the Navy should be built back up above 300 ships."

As the former New York City Mayor has done at past campaign rallies, he thanked the families of soldiers killed in the War on Terror, even asking a few to come up on stage and speak.

"He actually was in the midst of saving a young man's life," Carolyn Woods said with tears in her eyes. "I don't normally tell this, but a sniper killed my child."

Woods' son Julian, a Navy corpsman, died in Fallujah in 2004.

Joanne Gutcher, whose son William Joshua Rechenmacher died in Iraq last year, tells WOKV's Jared Halpern she's now a Rudy supporter.

"I don't want our sons to have died for nothing," she says. "All the sons and daughters, wives, fathers, all of them. I don't want it to be for nothing."

Hecklers briefly interrupted the campaign event, using loud speakers to chant anti-abortion slogans and calling Giuliani a "pro-choice baby killer."

Police quickly scattered the group, telling organizers they couldn't demonstrate at the Veterans Wall without a permit.

The event came on the heels of the latest Quinnipiac University poll showing Giuliani's lead has disappeared in Florida.

Real Clear Politics, a combination of several surveys and polls, also shows Giuliani's campaign losing steam in Florida, and says Giuliani and McCain are in a statistical tie with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in striking distance just two weeks before the Florida vote.

It calls into question Giuliani's Florida strategy. His campaign skipped early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on the Sunshine state and states holding primaries during Super Tuesday on February 5th.