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.
Too many Freepers are of the 'turn your brain off at the door' school of being principled.
If you think telling someone in the hospital with cancer that you're divorcing them is OK then you are as much a creep as Newt is. If you don't know about cancer and what fighting it can do to a person, then I strongly suggest you find out before it strikes someone you love, or even yourself.
sure, you know for an absolute fact that Edwards never cheated on his wife. look at Edwards, look at his wife, tell me with a straight face you believe that.
but Edwards doesn't have any republican private detectives following him around, so we don't know. that's the difference.
Here's some info from your same Field Poll. Note that in passing Prop 22 in 2000, 61% of voters opposed same sex marriage, yet Field would probably have been reporting somewhere in the low 50s in the same year. Not much has changed since 2003. Their polls are definitely slanted in favor of the liberal agenda.
Field Poll Online
Gay and Lesbian Rights Issues
March 2006
Trend of opinion about allowing same-sex marriages
where regular marriage laws apply (among California adults)
Disapprove Approve Undecided
February 2006
Total adults 51% 43 6
Registered voters 50% 44 6
2004* 50% 44 6
2003* 50% 42 8
1997 56% 38 6
1985 62% 30 8
1977 59% 28 13
..........anybody BUT Hillary.
Today in CA, I suspect if only whites were allowed to vote on Prop 22, the anti-gay marriage ban would fail. perserving Prop 22 would depned on support from blacks and latinos.
"First of all, have you EVER been around anyone with cancer? There is NO guarantee that you will not die of it or even make it out of the hospital. I'm going up Wednesday to collect the belongings of someone who went into the Vet hospital at Prescott with a small lump. He was told they could remove it with no problem at all. He died on the operating table.
If you think telling someone in the hospital with cancer that you're divorcing them is OK then you are as much a creep as Newt is. If you don't know about cancer and what fighting it can do to a person, then I strongly suggest you find out before it strikes someone you love, or even yourself."
Don't know why you would attack someone out of the blue like that, but I don't understand any of those posts you have been sending me, I would feel better if you just left me out of whatever is going on with you.
ROTFLMCO!
Giuliani's wife quits "Vagina"
New York polls stagnate as Hillary picks a new fight. Gore's base shakes and Bush's backyard grumbles. Union ponders Nader nod.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Alicia Montgomery
May 2, 2000 | Rudy Giuliani's wife, actress Donna Hanover, is postponing her stage run in "The Vagina Monologues" because of "family circumstances," according to the New York Post. The decision comes less than a week after Senate hopeful Giuliani announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Hanover's initial decision to take the part brought considerable attention as a result of the play's graphic sexual content and author Eve Ensler's outspoken support of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The incident also revived talk about the strained Giuliani marriage, which has been rocky in the years since rumors surfaced of the New York mayor's infidelity.
Although Hanover vows to assume the role at a later, unspecified date, Giuliani himself won't have to exchange any tickets. He had previously announced that he would not attend the show.
CA has closed primaries. Also GOP primary voters are more conservative than the rest of the state as a whole. Ex-LA Mayor Richard Ridoran (Sp?) couldn't win the 2002 primary. Arnold could only win by jumping into a bizarre, free-for-all recall election. Also Brian Bilbray won the CA-50 primary special only because Roach and the K-Man split the conservative vote. Rudy could very well win the CA primary, but he would have to spend a lot of time explaining himself.
Half of GOP voters favor gay marriage or civil unions. California is a live and let live state. I think Rudy sweeps in the GOP primary. It likes a savvy guy who keeps the tax bill low, seems competent, favors a strong defense, and seemingly keeps the religious nutters, both foreign and domestic, at bay. We shall see.
Foreign policy is important to all conservative Republicans and its the major reason Bush`s job approval hasn't sunk lower then it has in the last 1-1/2 years. At the same time, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, to indicate that Rudy Giuliani has some special ability when it comes to national defense and national security issues. All the possible major candidate names being thrown around are committed to finishing what we started in Iraq, committed to staying the course in the WOT, committed to our alliance with Israel, and at home, fostering a strong homeland security effort. The GOP should be nominating the most conservative candidate, not the most liberal candidate.
One more time. Reagan built a coalition that included both social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. It was a winning coalition in 1980, 1984, 1994 and 2000, and it can be a winner in 2008. Your attempts to undermine that coalition and throw out social conservatives will only help lead to another election day failure by the GOP in 2008. Republicans can't win without the votes of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives.
Do you really think that the Republicans didn't bust out the OR machine in 2004? I mean, come on. That's beyond naive.
no, I don't. I don't see this in the republican playbook at all - where is any evidence that Dem personal scandals were rooted out by republican private investigators?
The Dems even were able to get DOJ to wiretap Jeannie Pirro, as she attempted to get information on her husband's infidelity. where did that come from? I'll tell you where - she was supposed to be Hillary's senate opponent, that's where.
our side doesn't play this game - but we eat our own as soon as the first hint of scandal is "revealed". The Dems learned that from the # of votes lost to the Bush DUI revelation in 2000.
Yep. I like Rudy. I think he's a good leader, I think he's fiscally conservative, I'm not concerned about his stand on social issues (since I believe most should be handled at state and local levels, anyway), and although his infidelities give me pause, they aren't enough to rule him out for me absent a more compelling candidate. I'm flexible.
But any candidate who doesn't hew to the BOR is out of the question in my book -- that is where I draw the red line. And unfortunately, that includes Rudy (2nd Amendment) and McCain (1st Amendment "reform" with his vile CFR bill).
Here's my take on the White House contenders.
McCain will implode after the primaries. He is so used to media fawning that he doesn't know how to handle criticism.
A McCain vs Obama will be a redux of Brown vs DeWine.
Rudy is indistinguishable from a liberal RAT on social issues. With Rudy's past marital troubles, Obama could claim moral superiority over Rudy.The media will say nothing bad at all about Obama. The media will even claim that Obama is a moderate or even conservative RAT. Fair and balanced media means 90% favorable stories for Obama and only 50% favorable for Rudy.
Rudy vs Obama will be a redux of Corker vs Ford. The critical swing group in the election would be the GOP primary voters who did not vote for Rudy.
Mitt is a wildcard candidate. He's best looking and most articulate of the bunch. He could either win narrowly or lose in a landslide.
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