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.
I still don't understand why, as per this article, Donna irrationally insisted on the dog's support payment to be made in British pounds. :-)
I put illegal immigration squarely in the national security category.
Because the rinos on this site know nothing else but RUUUUUUUUUUdy.
WTF! I don't have any faith in liberals of any party affiliation, Democratic or Republican. My point was pretty straightforward. Attempts to purge the GOP of social conservatives, or fiscal cosnervatives for that matter, will only lead to utter failure and another win for the bad guys in 2008. Breaking up the old Reagan coalition is sure death for the GOP.
Rudy Giuliani is not the answer to the GOP`s problem. Rudy has supported liberalism his entire life. Rudy is the antithesis of conservatism.
Rudy did two great things while he was Mayor: made sure Arafat knew he was not welcome and had him removed from some event in NYC, and told the Saudi Arabians to shove their multimillion dollar "aid" check after 9-11/ If he had a creative hard-line approach like that as President, I might almost be enticed to vote for him, regardless of the fact that he is otherwise not a "Conservative". If ANY candidate could be enticed to have as part of his platform, the absolute BAN on building new mosques in the United States, I would vote for him. A step like that is ESSENTIAL. Without it, we are permanently back to Square One, no matter what else we do. Unfortunately, the ONLY candidates who would even consider doing that, will be on the Republican side, and they would first have to be anointed by the RNC, and the RNC would never certify such a plank/ but it is the only one that matters.
I do think Rudy would push for more gun control. And I think he would do so more successfully than Carter and the 'toon, precisely because he's a Republican. It's along the lines of "it took Nixon to go to China."
Let me amend that last post -- I'm working to train myself not to use the term "gun control." It's a misnomer, and is the language of our opponents. I should have said: I think Rudy would push for more anti-Second-Amendment legislation.
No, the last Republican congress, aided by POTUS, was bound and determined to destroy that coalition. If they had just controlled their ridiculous spending, I daresay libertarians and independents would have looked the other way on social issues.
Agreed. Bush&Company wanted to purge the GOP of fiscal conservatives. This current crop of libertarian minded Republicans, want to purge the GOP of social conservatives. Either way, the GOP can't survive. That was the unique political foundation of factors to the Reagan coalition. The modern Republican Party can't exist without both voting contingents.
In this case, his marital history points to a character problem. And character means a lot to many voters.
A scorned woman and a relative?
Drop off the radar for the good of the country. /Next
The 2008 Race will and All New York Affair. A Choice between a Liberal New Yorker ( Giuliani) and A VERY Liberal New Yorker.( Hillary Clinton.)
Sad prediction.
I'll support only a conservative with national (media) gonads.
In my own extended family I have seen this problem up close: not people directly related to ME, but my father's brother's wife was from a family where the other two sisters married two brothers who were cousins with them. The two sisters had 6 children among them, two of whom had various degrees of mental retardation. It just ain't wise: there is a higher degree probability of birth defects AUTOMATICALLY, though, of course it doesn't always happen/\
Marrying a cousin, on the face of it, always seemed to be to me just a very LAZY thing to do, kind of creepily convenient, like Woody Allen falling in love and marrying his and Miaa's adopted Asian child, technically his "daughter" , whatever her name is.
You left out the all-important detail that adds so much to the picture you carefully crafted: dressing more than once in drag, notably on SNL.
I think you're right. It's very difficult for social conservatives and libertarians to find common ground -- Reagan was so gifted that he managed to overcome the natural animosity between the two groups. Now, without a Reagan, I think our best bet for common ground overall is Constitutional adherence, fiscal conservatism, plus pushing social issues at a state and local level. That way social conservatives don't have to live with a porn emporium on one side and a crackhouse on the other, and libertarians can do what they like in the privacy of their own homes without having to worry about the JBTs breaking down their door.
And if they don't like the social mores of their current home, there's undoubtedly another city or state that will better suit them. That's what the founders had in mind, anyway -- a whole bunch of little laboratories of liberty (as defined by the local residents).
Of course, that won't happen, because everyone on this site is too busy pointing fingers at everyone else, and the rest of our less-interested-in-politics potential allies have fallen asleep in front of Dancing with the Stars.
:)
I should have added two things to the list of things we should be able to agree on at a federal level: Constitutional adherence, fiscal conservatism, and the two things that Reagan embodied: national defense, and the wonderful promise of American freedom and enterprise. Add social issues at the state and local level, and I bet we could forge a new coalition.
STATES RATIFY Constitutional Amendments.
If you cut taxes and limit government, people will make the right choices themselves.
Illegal immigration...
I know what Julie-Annie has said and done. I also know what he has not done. My Constituitonal rights do not end at the New York city limits, no matter who is mayor...
Add social issues at the state and local level,...
States ratify Amendments...
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