Posted on 01/07/2007 11:46:24 AM PST by wagglebee
THERE is one woman who could cause Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, more problems than Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House: she is Donna Hanover, his second wife, writes Sarah Baxter.
Hanover, an actress and broadcaster, was enraged by Giuliani’s flagrant infidelity towards the end of their 18-year marriage and the divorce case was vicious. Giuliani’s advisers fear that she could be a loose cannon in the 2008 campaign.
Giuliani was acclaimed as the “mayor of America” for his heroic role during the attacks on September 11, 2001 and is revered for his leadership. At the time he was living in the spare room of an apartment belonging to gay friends after Hanover forced him out of Gracie Mansion, the official residence.
Hanover refused to confirm that she would vote for Giuliani as mayor of New York even when she was married to him. “What kind of wife is that?” Raoul Felder, Giuliani’s lawyer, fumed. “She’s essentially saying she’s not going to vote for him.”
Hanover once stood outside a shower at Gracie Mansion, expecting to confront Judith Nathan, Giuliani’s mistress, now his third wife. In the event, a startled golfing friend of Giuliani’s emerged.
Hanover was also accused of a lack of sympathy while the former mayor was battling prostate cancer, by banishing him to a spare bedroom and exercising noisily on a treadmill at 5am.
New Yorkers relished the details of Giuliani’s larger-than-life personal story. But conservative “values voters” could be different, as Giuliani’s own aides noted in a 140-page memo leaked last week by supporters of a rival candidate.
The campaign dossier suggested that Hanover could be one of several potentially “insurmountable” vulnerabilities that could cause him to drop out of the race. It was an embarrassing start to a campaign that is not yet officially under way.
Giuliani’s record in fighting crime and terrorism has placed him at the top of several polls for the 2008 Republican nomination, edging out Senator John McCain in popular support. But the party base may be turned off by his support for abortion, immigration, gun control and gay rights (although not gay marriage). It is their votes that he needs to secure the nomination.
“It would be one thing if Giuliani could say, ‘I’m a strong social conservative in my private life’, but he can’t even say that,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, a conservative commentator and author of The Party of Death, an attack on social liberalism. “It’s not just the fact of his multiple marriages, it is the way the Hanover marriage melted down. It was operatic.”
When Giuliani met Hanover on a blind date in the early 1980s, his first marriage to Regina, his second cousin, was already over. Hanover, who went on to appear in the television series Ally McBeal, was a glamorous soulmate who seemed to enjoy the spotlight as much as he did.
They had two children, Andrew, 21, and Caroline, 17, but in 1996 Hanover stopped calling herself by his last name and a year later Vanity Fair magazine said that he was having an “intimate relationship” with a senior member of his staff.
In 2000, without telling Hanover first, Giuliani announced at a press conference that he was separating from her. She retaliated by accusing him of being unfaithful with the employee, but he was already with Nathan.
Maggie Gallagher, a family values campaigner, was outraged by Giuliani’s “scummy” performance, accusing him of making Bill Clinton “look good as a husband and father”.
New Yorkers learnt during the divorce case that their cancer- afflicted mayor was temporarily impotent and Hanover demanded a huge settlement, including £760 a month to care for Goalie, the family’s golden retriever.
Felder struck back, accusing Hanover of being an “uncaring mother” who was “howling like a stuck pig”.
In the end Giuliani, who was beginning to earn big consultancy fees after September 11, agreed to a settlement of $6.8m to avoid the full horror of a court case.
Hanover has married Ed Oster, her university sweetheart, and written a book, My Boyfriend’s Back, about rekindling an old romance. Even if she stays mum, there is enough in the public domain to rattle conservatives. Yet however vicious the personal attacks on Giuliani, they are unlikely to dent his reputation for competence. He did, after all, handle the September 11 attacks while bunking with gay friends in the midst of an affair and a divorce battle.
"OK, this is to all the boneheads who are going to push for a Tancredo or Hunter or anything else presidency: "
Most other elections you'd be right. But the four top guys are deeply flawed this time around, and the last time we ran a campaign picked by the country clubbers like yourself was with Bob Dole. Come to think of it, the 2006 mid terms were run by you guys too. Rules are meant to be broken.
I freely admit that infidelity in a marriage is one of the few, absolute litmus tests I apply to discard political candidates running for high office. As you have expressed, I also believe it is a reliable indicator of overall strength of character.
I stopped listening to Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in 1992 after he appeared in the CBS 60 Minutes interview with Hillary and basically admitted to extramarital affairs without coming out and saying the words.
Drama from Rudy's personal life isn't going to hurt him.
What can sink him, if Rudy isn't aggressive, is this. People like Rahm Emmanuel and Chris Lahane will probably try to take Giuliani's greatest advantage, 911, and turn it against him. People will support a scoundrel these days, but they are skeptical of heros.
If Giuliani is aggressive and goes out with a kick-ass attitude, that won't be a problem. If he looks like an incompetent, flatfooted politician like Bill Frist during the primary fight, well, he'll lose-- it would sound like Kerry droning on about how he served in Vietnam. Hopefully the Giuliani from the national convention shows up, and not the Giuliani who lost a 140-page document last week.
Trial by fire during the primary season is the only way to know. And unlike FR, most Republicans in 3D space want someone who can win.
"It's simple. MSM loves Rudy because they know it's the best they can hope for. Imagine a race between Rudy and Hillary or Obama. There's no way liberals can lose ... or conservatives can win."
Ain't that the truth.
Darwin at work.
Reagan was an FDR Democrat, a bigtime new dealer.
OK, I am laughing really loud at your bumper sticker!
If Rudy gets the nomination, the party will splinter. A lot of people will leave if a pro-gay, anti-gun, and anti-life lib is carrying the Republican banner. And many of them will be very hard to woo back.
Are you saying Newt was once a woman? ;)
You have GOT to be kidding. There is no man else that I would have wanted at the helm of 9/11!!!
I am glad that my vote renders yours impotent!!!
So what. Reagan even called himself a liberal Democrat in the 1930`s. With the outbreak of WWII, that began to change. By 1952, Reagan voted for Eisenehower and the rest is history.
OTOH, Rudy Giuliani was born a liberal, and will die a liberal. He can call himself a Republican. As with most conservatives, he won't ever get my vote. Not now, not ever!
Possibly, but pictures of Rudy strutting around as a drag queen, e.g., the cover of National Review a few months ago, most certainly will.
As evidenced by the growth of social welfare programs while he was governor.
Excellent points, TD. Giuliani is an imposition on the body politic in an effort to dramatically change the values system upon which our republic was built.
Rudy is the linchpin in The Plan to takeover the Repub party and ditch all us pesty social conservatives. Now The Plan to dislodge the conservative GOP power base ignorantly depends on the false assumption that conservatives are going to roll over and play dead. Fat chance. Repubs cannot---and will not---win without social conservatives.
Here's The Plan straight from the horse's mouth, conhead guru Irving Kristol (Fox pundit Billy Kristol's father, who are avid Rudy backers): "The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be.....to convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy."
Oh yeah, that idea worked really well elsewhere (/sarc). Luckily, professional help for that dictator fixation of his is available.
Country clubber?
If only.
Second cousins only share about 6% of the same genetics. I don't think that is great, but it's not really like first cousins, who would share over 10%.
It is the soldier who takes orders.
And when he gives orders, he receives salutes, not opposition.
It isn't a matter of what he risks. And after Kerry, Webb, Murtha, etc. I have no patience for people who use military service as a shield from criticism or as some sort of indicator of every variety of intellectual prowess.
Does that apply to Duncan Hunter's military service?
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