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.
His ex-wife is a nasty, social climbing wench.
Torie, I don't know if you get any podcasts (I'd recommend it, there's some great free stuff out there), but the Federalist society has the audio of a debate (of sorts) between Breyer and Scalia on the Constitution.
The substance is interesting, if well-worn. Basically, Breyer says that nearly every piece of legislation is unclear and so ... it can mean whatever he wants it to mean and Scalia works very hard not to say, "Steven, you ignorant slut."
It's all very cordial, of course, but you can sense Scalia's frustration.
But what strikes me is Breyer's manner of speaking and making arguments. It is almost a textbook example of a pompous imbecile. I'm not speaking in a partisan manner here, his comments are either inane or pedestrian but he acts as if he's the man who instructed both Socrates and Solomon and they both disappointed him as students.
I'd heard it and I thought you'd appreciate such a thing. The whole audio file is 90 minutes.
Thanks for the head's up. It sounds like fun. Poor Breyer just isn't very good in debates. He is too prolix, and fuzzy. He doesn't offer up examples of the application of his approach, that are in the least compelling. It is amazing he was a Harvard law professor. His classes must have really sucked. With a bit of research and preparation, I suspect I could be a more effective advocate, however disingenuous, of Breyerism, than Breyer himself. :)
I watched part of it, Scalia was amusing and clear, Breyer was droll and boring.
Are you using the word droll in some sense other than amusing?
No. You had to laugh at him, he was so proper and so boring and so liberal in his view of the constitution. Scalia had the audience laughing, Breyer practically put them to sleep.
Maybe it comes off more in the audio, but the pomposity was quite obvious to me.
That's a better word.... I was searching for the best description of what I observed. He is an odd duck, droll can be odd, too.
I really don't think Rudy has much of a shot.
Good. Get him out of the race now. After all the corruption in the GOP that cost us the last election along with the pedophile, Faggy Foley, WE DON'T NEED THIS.
Dear God in heaven, "our guys" are starting to make Bill Clinton look like Mother Teresa.
I think Breyer's substance wasn't terrible, if you are susceptible to such arguments.
It was very professorish. I've taught enough calculus classes to know how to talk so that people will listen to you but won't ask any questions.
There was an interesting thought that occurred to me. He kept saying that he didn't understand the plain meaning of a certain statute. I kept thinking, "I wouldn't go around admitting that I'm stupid." But that's just me.
>If she has moved on from her divorce and is at all happy with her current life and husband, then she won't say a thing.<
Doesn't matter because you can bet your bottom dollar that the MSM would make a bee-line to her, even offer her a few for an interview with leading questions to be answwered. Rudy is not my man, and I don't pretend to know or understand his private life, but the dirt bags wouldn't pass up badgering his ex. Too bad.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.