Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy: someone got hold of a campaign dossier for Rudy Giuliani outlining his strengths and weaknesses as a Presidential candidate. Whoops. The Giuliani camp smells a rat:
Advisers to former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that someone infiltrated the Giuliani camp last fall and stole a document about his presidential prospects and political liabilities. It was then leaked, they said, as a “dirty trick” to embarrass Mr. Giuliani and highlight such headaches as his controversial former aide, Bernard Kerik, and one of his ex-wives, Donna Hanover.
The Daily News was given the 140-page document recently by someone “sympathetic to one of Giuliani’s rivals for the White House,” The News said in an article published yesterday. According to the article, the document proposes a $100 million fund-raising effort for 2007, names an array of potential donors, and warns that Mr. Giuliani might face “insurmountable” problems, including questions about Mr. Kerik and Ms. Hanover.
Oh, yeah. Donna Hanover. The people who worship at the feet of “America’s Mayor” didn’t hear much about that, since it happened pre-9/11. Long story short, Giuliani announced his divorce from the mother of his children by holding a press conference in which he announced the separation and his relationship with his mistress (now his third wife).
On Mother’s Day.
Oh, and he hadn’t told his wife about the press conference. So she got to field questions from the press about the divorce she didn’t know she was having on Mother’s Day.
This after a couple of years in which he had an obvious affair with an his communications director, Cristyne Lategano, during which time he brought her to events at Gracie Mansion, pissing off his wife, who withdrew from the public role of mayor’s wife. Lategano eventually left the job and married someone else.
According to the Daily News, who got hold of the dossier, Hanover is listed among the “problems” that the campaign has to deal with. As is his current wife, Judith Nathan (likely due to the way he carried on with her while dicking over Hanover), and his much-farther-left-than-the-party-poohbahs stand on “social issues.”
Giuliani has a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights record, and he famously got put up by a longstanding gay couple after Hanover said she and the kids weren’t leaving Gracie Mansion, certainly not after being treated like dirt. One of the couple shared Giuliani’s love of opera, so they went to the Met frequently.
And there are other things that might worry Middle America if they knew. Be sure to check out these clips on Youtube from an upcoming documentary on Giuliani. Especially the clips from his appearances on film, in costume or drag, for the Mayor’s Inner Circle Press Roast. It’s tradition for NYC mayors to do skits for the roast lampooning themselves, but Giuliani particularly liked appearing in drag.
Are you sensing a theme in the things that are causing them concern? In a sane world, people might be a bit more concerned about the way he handled the Diallo and Dorismond shootings, among others; his losing jihad against free speech (Brooklyn Museum, anyone? New York Magazine bus ads?); his approval of abusive police tactics; his crackdown against nightlife and bizarre enforcement of cabaret licenses (in which bars got their liquor licenses yanked if anyone danced and the place didn’t have a cabaret license); his attempt to do away with term limits by “suggesting” that the election to replace him at the end of his term in November 2001 be “delayed.”
And, you know, Abner Louima.
But we don’t live in a sane world, and none of those authoritarian thug tendencies will be a problem for Republican voters. Just the stuff about queers and whether his ex-wife can be bribed or bullied into keeping her mouth shut (note that she — and the current wife — are listed as problems, not the way he treated Hanover during their divorce or the way he paraded Nathan in front of the press as the way to let Hanover know he wanted a divorce).
Part of his appeal as a Presidential candidate has been his “America’s Mayor” image. But that’s got holes in it. For one thing, he was the one who decided to locate the City’s emergency command center in WTC 7, disregarding the FDNY’s advice that putting it in a complex that had been previously attacked — not to mention over a giant diesel tank — might not be such a hot idea. Not to mention the radio problem — it was well-known that the FDNY and NYPD radios were incompatible with each other and that there were a lot of problems with fire department units, which led to more deaths than necessary.
Then there’s Kerik, who was his right-hand man for years, but who abused his power as both Corrections Commissioner and Police Commissioner, took money from mobbed-up contractors for apartment renovations and his wedding, commandeered a donated apartment for a “love nest,” and while he was at it, went to Iraq and fucked up the police force there.
And, well, he’s been working as a security consultant.
The public disclosure of the document is potentially damaging for Mr. Giuliani, not least because since 9/11, he has built a business as a private consultant on security issues while creating an image as a political leader capable of combating terrorism. Indeed, an adviser to one of his possible rivals in 2008, Senator John McCain of Arizona, half-joked yesterday that it was interesting that Mr. Giuliani’s businesses included security consulting.
“I’m surprised that something like that would ever leave the custody of a campaign, and that such raw and frank information would be around the countryside,” said the McCain adviser, John Weaver. “That said, a lot of the information was predictable.”
I’d bet money that McCain’s behind the theft — or rather, someone from his campaign (plausible deniability). Right now, Giuliani is polling better than McCain, but it’s McCain’s turn, dammit. And dollars to donuts he learned his lesson in the 2000 South Carolina primary, when he was the target of a whispering campaign alleging that his adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black daughter. He’s not going to let that happen to him again, but he’s damn well going to make sure he does it to someone else first.