Rudy
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0212072giuliani1.html
Rudy Giuliani’s Vulnerabilities
Secret study cited “weirdness factor” among candidate weaknesses
FEBRUARY 12–As he campaigns for the Republican presidential
nomination, Rudolph Giuliani will have to contend with political and
personal baggage unknown to prospective supporters whose knowledge of
the former New York mayor is limited to his post-September 11
exploits. So, in a bid to educate the electorate, we’re offering
excerpts from a remarkable “vulnerability study” that was
commissioned by Giuliani’s campaign prior to his successful 1993 City
Hall run. The confidential 450-page report, authored by Giuliani’s
research director and another aide, was the campaign’s attempt to
identify possible lines of attack against Giuliani and prepare the
candidate and his staff to counter “the kinds of no-holes-barred
assault” expected in a general election rematch with Democratic
incumbent David Dinkins. As he tried to win election in an
overwhelmingly Democratic city, Giuliani needed “inoculating against”
the “Reagan Republican moniker,” the vulnerability study reported.
“The Giuliani campaign should emphasize its candidate’s independence
from traditional national Republican policies.” The final six words
of that sentence are underlined in the study. Additionally, the
Giuliani report noted that the candidate needed to make it clear to
voters that he was “pretty good on most issues of concern to gay and
lesbian New Yorkers” and was pro-choice and supported public funding
for abortion. “He will continue city funding for abortions at city
hospitals. Nothing more, nothing less.” Giuliani’s stance on these
issues, of course, may leave him vulnerable today with an entirely
different electorate. The campaign study was obtained by The Village
Voice’s Wayne Barrett in the course of preparing “Rudy!,” an
investigative biography of Giuliani. In its preface, the study notes
that it is “tough and hard-hitting. It pulls no punches.” Perhaps
that is why Giuliani, as Barrett reported, ordered copies of the
vulnerability study destroyed shortly after it was circulated to top
campaign aides. He surely could not have been pleased to read that
his “personal life raises questions about a ‘weirdness factor.’” That
weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani’s 14-year marriage
to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to
have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for
the unorthodox nuptials. “When asked about his personal life,
Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers,” the campaign
report stated. “All of this brings the soundness of his judgement
into question–and the veracity of his answers.” The internal study
also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam
draft and was a “man without convictions” because of his
transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice
Department appointee. “In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political
contradiction…He doesn’t really fit with the Republicans. Too
liberal. Giuliani has troubles with the Democrats, too.” On the
following pages, you’ll find the vulnerability report’s cover and
preface and sections on Reagan Republicanism, women and abortion,
Giuliani’s first marriage and divorce, draft dodging, gay issues,
racial polarization, and his party registration “flip-flop.” (27 pages)