Razzle Dazzle: Can Rudy Outrun His Past?

Razzle Dazzle
Can Rudy Outrun His Past?

By RICHARD STEIER

For some time now, two of the more compelling questions surrounding Rudy Giuliani's bid for President have involved whether he could win the Republican nomination, and if he didn't, would it be for the right or the wrong reasons?

"Right and wrong" are used loosely here, much as Mr. Giuliani did in making decisions as Mayor, and reflect the peculiar orthodoxies of the GOP.

By my own standards, Mr. Giuliani should not be found unworthy based on his multiple marriages (although the manner in which he ended the second one goes directly to legitimate doubts about his character), his past stands on gun control, gay rights, abortion and immigration (even as he scrambles to blur those positions), or his stances on tax-related issues as they affected the city, however much he went against the grain of what national Republicans say they stand for.

All That Doesn't Glitter

On the other hand, his record as Mayor on all days besides Sept. 11, 2001, his de-funding of vital city services from hospitals to mass transit, his dismal record on education, and a cult of loyalty and favoritism masquerading as leadership that can be summed up in two words - Bernie Kerik - are all issues that should count heavily against the current GOP front-runner.

AMERICA'S MAYOR AND AMERICA'S FELON: Rudy Giuliani's presidential hopes could go south in a hurry if his former Police Commissioner, Bernie Kerik, is indicted again on charges that could include taking bribes from a mob-linked contractor to help him win a city waste-hauling license. Both sides of Rudy got a public airing last week, starting with a debate on financial issues among the Republican presidential hopefuls in Dearborn, Michigan and concluding with a Daily News report that Mr. Kerik is about to be indicted again.

During the Oct. 9 debate, Mr. Giuliani found himself fending off criticism on taxes from Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts who is trying just as hard as Mr. Giuliani to obscure his past record in order to curry favor with hard-line Republican conservatives. Our former Mayor sought to fortify himself against attacks in that area by stating that over his eight years in office, "I cut taxes by over $9 billion ... .You can't possibly cut every tax ... you need money for police, you need money for military."

His framing of the issue that way - taxes for guns - may have reflected a perception that GOP voters don't want to hear about using tax dollars for frivolous stuff like education or health care.

Mr. Romney engaged in his own version of obfuscation by assailing Mr. Giuliani for keeping "the President" from exercising the line-item veto, not bothering to mention that the chief executive in question was Bill Clinton and that their court battle concerned an attempt to use that veto to prevent more than $200 million in Medicaid reimbursements from going to city-based hospitals.

Referring to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the line-item veto, Mr. Giuliani told the audience, "It's unconstitutional. What the heck can you do about that if you're a strict constructionist? I am in favor of the line-item veto, except you have to do it legally. And as the Mayor of New York, if I had let President Clinton take $250 million away from the people of my city illegally and unconstitutionally, I wouldn't have been much of a Mayor."

Mr. Romney also whacked Mr. Giuliani for opposing the repeal of the city's commuter tax in 1999 by the State Legislature, arguing that it showed his heart wasn't in tax relief.

Aided City With Minimal Pain

This criticism was off the mark on two counts. One was that while the commuter tax brought the city roughly $400 million a year in revenue, it was small enough - less than half a percent of wages - that one Long Island resident who was earning more than $70,000 a year at the time said he had never noticed it and therefore didn't know how much repeal would save him.

Mr. Romney also overlooked the tepid nature of Mr. Giuliani's opposition to repeal - which stood in sharp contrast to the outspoken campaign he led against the Brooklyn Museum that same year for displaying a painting that was criticized as anti-Catholic. The then-Mayor couched his commuter-tax criticism largely in partisan terms, training his fire against Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver rather than the Republican movers behind the bill, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Governor Pataki. There was some justification for taking that position, since Mr. Silver was the one official of the three whose constituents would be harmed by repeal. Even so, Mr. Giuliani never stepped into the issue vigorously enough to serve as a counterweight to what motivated Mr. Silver - a Rockland County Senate race that he hoped could help tip the balance of power in the upper house of the Legislature to the Democrats.

Mr. Silver offered a prime target for Mr. Giuliani's justifiable ire: someone letting political considerations take precedence over the city's best interests. Rudy never swung for the fences at this hanging curveball, however, because he had political considerations of his own: a planned run for the Senate in 2000 when he would have been courting suburban voters. A desire not to be remembered for leading the charge against some of them receiving tax relief - however small - almost surely was the reason he took an uncharacteristically low-key stance in opposing the repeal.

Taxing Caricatures

But the campaign trail is not a place where candidates of either party strive to justify taxes, no matter how valid the case, and this tendency is particularly pronounced among Republicans.

The result was that some of the others sharing the stage with Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney reduced tax issues to caricatures, including Mike Huckabee, the ex-Arkansas Governor who otherwise came off as fairly thoughtful.

He proposed that the income tax be replaced by a "consumer tax," even though such a switch would be regressive because it hits those with lower incomes just as hard as it does wealthier individuals. His spin in favor was: "It un-taxes productivity ... Folks like us wind up paying taxes but drug dealers don't, illegals don't, prostitutes and pimps don't."

Later on, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, whose impetus for running comes primarily from his exposure as the District Attorney on "Law and Order," called for phasing out the Alternative Minimum Tax, explaining, "When the Democrats start targeting the rich guy, if you're a middle-class guy you ought to run to the other side of the house because you're gonna get hit."

Rudy's School Dodge

Late in the debate, MSNBC commentator Maria Bartiromo asked the candidates, "What is the greatest threat to the American economy?" Mr. Romney responded with a malapropism, saying, "The sense of optimism," when he meant that Americans needed to be more confident about the economic future.

Mr. Giuliani said the biggest problem was "our education ... if we can reform that and change that around [school] choice, I think the sky's the limit."

He was referring to the use of vouchers and charter schools as substitutes for public education. This has been a theme since his second term as Mayor, when he began seeking to appeal to Republicans nationally. But the issue is not a comfortable one for Mr. Giuliani, since the low achievement in the city's public schools during his tenure stands in biting contrast to his achievements in reducing crime here. Mayor Bloomberg's success in making progress in the public schools while crime dropped to an even greater extent despite a loss of 4,000 police officers further highlights Mr. Giuliani's limitations as a manager.

A more glaring and ominous reminder on that front surfaced with the Oct. 12 report in the Daily News that the U.S. Attorney's Office is expected to indict Mr. Kerik next month on charges that include bribe-receiving, tax fraud and obstruction of justice.

Adds to Rudy's Agita

This would be particularly embarrassing for Mr. Giuliani for reasons that go beyond Mr. Kerik being the former campaign driver whom he elevated to be his Correction Commissioner and Police Commissioner and later recommended to serve as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. The former Mayor has already caught flak over Mr. Kerik after a flock of revelations about curious financial arrangements, a friendship with an individual linked to the Gambino Crime Family, and his use of an apartment intended as a resting place for Ground Zero workers to carry on simultaneous affairs with two mistresses.

The new charges, according to the News, go beyond those that prompted Mr. Kerik to plead guilty in June of last year to a violation of the city's Conflict of Interest Law when, during his tenure as Correction Commissioner, he accepted nearly $200,000 from individuals seeking to do business with the city that covered the purchase and renovation of a Riverdale apartment. Most of that money came from the Gambino-linked friend and his brother.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kerik was reportedly offered a chance to plead guilty to similar charges and tax evasion as part of a deal under which he would have been sentenced to two years in Federal prison. He turned it down, electing to roll the dice on beating the case in court.

Improper Influence

According to the News, the probe was subsequently expanded, and it looks like it's coming up snake eyes for Mr. Giuliani. Reporter Greg Smith stated that the Feds are expected to charge Mr. Kerik with attempting to influence the bid by the mob-linked firm, Interstate Industrial Corporation, to gain a license from the city Trade Waste Commission.

Nearly three years ago, after Mr. Kerik's nomination for Homeland Security Secretary collapsed, the former chief prober for the Trade Waste Commission, Ray Casey, told the New York Times that while Mr. Kerik had spoken to him about Interstate, he had not tried to influence his decision on licensing the firm.

But the News last week cited a source as saying that Mr. Kerik told Mr. Casey - during a July 1999 meeting at Walker's Bar, not far from Correction Department headquarters - that he did not believe the allegations that Interstate was mob-connected were credible.

His clinching argument, according to the News, was, "If I thought Interstate was mobbed up, do you think I'd let my brother work there?"

Did Casey Tell Giuliani?

If the News report is accurate, it presents several new problems for Mr. Giuliani. One is that it raises questions about what, if anything, Mr. Casey - who is currently the head of the Off-Track Betting Corporation - said about the conversation to Mr. Giuliani, who happens to be his cousin. It has already been established that the then-Mayor's Investigation Commissioner, the late Ed Kuriansky, informed Mr. Giuliani of Mr. Kerik's association with Frank DiTommaso - who owned Interstate with his brother - and his role in arranging a meeting between Mr. DiTommaso and Mr. Casey about the waste-hauling license.

The paper also stated that there was a third person present at Walker's - Michael Caruso, who at the time was the Correction Department's Inspector General.

Mr. Caruso's standing as the supposedly independent watchdog for the agency was blown out of the water six years ago when Mr. Kerik in his autobiography described him as one of his closest confidants, someone who helped prepare him for his interview for the Police Commissioner's job.

Way Over the Line

It is one thing, however, for an Inspector General to be overly friendly with someone he is supposed to keep at arm's length, and quite another to have let himself be so co-opted as to be present at a meeting where that individual is clearly acting inappropriately to influence another agency's handling of an application by a firm with reputed organized-crime ties. If true, it dramatically underscores the degree to which the Correction Department's operations were corrupted during Mr. Giuliani's tenure, while raising questions about whether Mr. Casey, as both a subordinate and a relative, would have concealed Mr. Kerik's impropriety from him.

Mr. Giuliani's continued lead in the polls, and the uninspiring performance thus far of his freshest challenger, Mr. Thompson, suggest that he may be able to overcome the divergence between his past stances on the issues and the typical preferences of Republican leaders and voters.

But the dropping of the other shoe on Mr. Kerik could make a shambles of Mr. Giuliani's image as a paragon of strength, rectitude and leadership skills. Strip away the gleaming surface and his appeal to voters could rust in a hurry.