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.
LOL, No but I do think of John Edwards in that way.
I agree with you that Rudy has to win NH to stay alive. I suspect he is the favorite there, certainly not Mitt, and probably not McCain, although a NH poll would be nice. The campaign will sort things out in a hurry.
He was tied with McCain in N.H. in a recent poll we had posted on the F.R.
Nothing a little "New Yorkancide" might fix, eh Rudy......?
Illegal immigration may not be a signature social issue, like gay marriage or abortion, or creationism, or prayer in schools, but it sort of is. Illegal immigration is certainly a class issue - at least it cuts that way. Ditto the Second Amendment. I view both as hybrids in that sense.
Thank you. Where was Mitt in NH? If you have a link, that would be helpful to this thread. Thanks.
After all said and done she married him for opportunties not out of love!
After all said and done she married him for opportunties not out of love!
I also read that when he married his cousin, he didn't know they were as closely related as it turned out, he thought she was his third cousin, and he had that marriage anulled before he married Hanover. IMO Hanover left him emotionally long before he left her.
This is the phrase that s Rudy:
"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."
I'm sorry, but all of the other stuff is simply very hilariously gruesome and sort of a "Desperate Housewivish" comes to Gracie Mansion.
she even wanted child support for the golden retriever..
Now that is just plain funny.
BULLoney! You're bound and determined to work at destroying the winning coalition of social and fiscal conservatives that Reagan built the GOP into during the second half of the 1970`s. IMO, that is a LOSER! Besides, Republicans haven't nominated a pro-abortion candidate for Prez since Gerald Ford in 1976. The social issues do matter.
Will you post that link for me?
The welfare plantation... cut taxes??? What a bunch of smoke and mirrors...
She married her college sweetheart in 2003. She released a book and evidentally is very happy in her new life. My guess is she will not get involved, if only for the sake of their children.
That makes no sense whatsoever. I'll be voting in the Republican primary.
Duncan Hunter was in New Hampshire today. I also heard Arnold is moving the California primary to February and some may actually move to the end of 2007!
You post was just too elliptical for me, to fathom the thrust of your parry. I am sure you had some sort of point, but it just escaped me. Sorry.
Look at guys like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, etc.,
Glenn Ford served from WW2 to Vietnam, John Wayne did not serve in the military. But he was no leftist either.
That's right!
How is turning a blind eye to illegal immigration fiscally conservative?
Turning this country into a third world welfare plantation will not reduce the size of government or taxes one bit...
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