Posted on 03/31/2007 4:40:37 PM PDT by Pokey78
The first face-to-face confrontation of the 2008 presidential race is looming over a US Senate inquiry into health problems suffered by workers at New York’s ground zero after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
As the chairwoman of a Senate subcommittee investigating complaints that workers were misled about air quality after the collapse of the twin towers, Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democrat front-runner for the presidential nomination, confirmed last week that she is considering calling Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and the leading Republican contender, to testify at a public hearing.
The health committee’s inquiry has presented Clinton with an intriguing political choice with potentially volatile repercussions for the presidential race. By calling Giuliani as a witness, she could place him in the awkward position of having to submit to her senatorial authority and face a grilling that might dent the heroic image he acquired for his response to the 9/11 attacks.
At the same time Democratic aides have acknowledged that Clinton might risk being accused of playing politics with a tragedy. Giuliani said last week that he was happy to testify “to anybody who has a fair mind about it” and is “approaching it from a nonpolitical point of view”.
Clinton said last week she was still “looking at all the people available to testify”. But other prominent New York Democrats have demanded Giuliani should answer questions about whether he could have done more as mayor to protect the workers who spent weeks digging in dust and dirt that is now considered to have been dangerously toxic.
“Who made decisions, if any, that resulted unnecessarily in a lot of people getting sick?” asked Congressman Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes the World Trade Center site.
The Senate inquiry follows claims by at least 9,000 New Yorkers that they are suffering from lung and stomach ailments they blame on the toxic rubble at ground zero. Their cause attracted national attention in January when Clinton invited the son of Cesar Borja, a stricken New York policeman, to attend President George W Bush’s state of the union address as her guest. Borja was waiting for a lung transplant but died of respiratory failure a few hours before Bush spoke.
Despite subsequent revelations that Borja may not have spent long periods working at ground zero, the health inquiry has become a potential embarrassment for Giuliani, who is increasingly being forced to defend the actions that made him a national icon. He was dubbed “America’s mayor” by Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host.
Last month Giuliani was fiercely criticised by a firemen’s union that has never forgiven him for halting the search for bodies. The mayor was anxious at the time that clean-up operations should begin, but more than five years later body parts are still being found around ground zero.
He has also been criticised for failing to provide the New York Fire Department with more modern communications equipment, which was requested after the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
Sally Regenhard, whose son was one of the 343 firefighters killed in the attacks, said last week she had no problem if Giuliani ran for president on his record of reducing New York crime, “but when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem”.
Clinton has been swift to exploit her rival’s difficulties. She earned three standing ovations at a firemen’s convention in Washington this month and promised that, as president, she would “take care of the people who have taken care of us”.
Yet she has also been careful to avoid direct criticism of Giuliani, and several analysts have warned that a face-to-face challenge on his 9/11 record would be risky. “It’s not smart strategy. It’s too early,” Douglas Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College, told the New York Sun. Instead she should “take the high road”.
Behind the fencing over health issues lies mounting pressure on both Clinton and Giuliani camps to maintain the healthy opinion poll leads that each has staked out in the race for their respective party nominations. In a Gallup poll published last week by USA Today, Giuliani’s lead over Senator John McCain of Arizona had shrunk from 24 points at the beginning of March to nine points three weeks later.
The former mayor also faces a possible challenge from former senator Fred Thompson, a Hollywood actor turned conservative politician who shot from nil to 12 points in the same poll, simply by announcing that he was considering entering the race.
In the Gallup poll, Clinton’s lead over Senator Barack Obama, who is seeking to become the first African-American president, narrowed slightly from 14 points to 13 points.
On Thursday a new Time magazine poll gave Clinton only an eight point lead over Obama, with former senator John Edwards apparently benefiting from a major sympathy boost after the announcement that his wife’s cancer has become incurable. Edwards jumped nine points to 26 points, only four behind Obama.
If Clinton decides to call Giuliani as a witness, her health inquiry may turn into an intriguing preview of next year’s presidential debates. But the ex-mayor warned the senator last week that he expected any testimony about health issues at ground zero to be “above politics”, and he also reminded her he was a possible victim himself.
“I was probably there as often as anybody, as you know,” he said. “So any exposure to anything bad that anyone else has, I personally had.”
We have crazed freepers praising hitlery, praising the NYSlimes as second only to the Holy Bible, and embracing every lunatic on the face of the earth who would blame Rudy rather than the terrorists for bringing down the WTC.
juliani bowed out and let hillary have that senate seat.
uh duh! it's a pubbie stupid.
She should hire Joey Greco to see if those rumors about Bill are true.
I think calling her Mrs. Bill Clinton is great. It will only serve to irritate her and show the truth. She is really not her own person.
No wonder we lose elections, we're our own worst enemies.
btw - thanks for the reply, I was beginning to think that all rationale had flown out the window around here, and that I'd get flamed for my response to post #11
If it happens and gets political, Hillary will be handed her breakfast and lunch.
"In another time, another era, Rudy would be a staunch Democrat upholding American values"
He's a democrat today as well, hijacking the republican party... It's a pity you don't see that...
I don't like Rudy but I'm hoping he puts Hillary in her place over this. She has no business politicizing 9/11, when her husband's policies led directly to the tragedy.
See #27... No one is praising Hillary.
On this issue, Rudy deserves our support.
The person who is politicizing 9/11 is Rudy. That's his ONLY claim to fame, and the more she attacks him on this the better.
Otherwise the REAL republicans will have to, and that will be unseemly.
Why does he deserve our support? Do you think that any other mayor of a large city would have been any less outspoken had they been the target of 9-11?
I would submit that even the mayor of Dearborn MI would have been outspoken about the attack.
You've got to be kidding me. Siding with Hiterly is 1000x worse than siding with Guliani on any issue. Ever.
Guliani may be considered a RINO by some, but Hiterly is a frigging socialist and a true danger to this country and the Constitution. She makes her husband look like a conservative. This woman is pure evil.
With that said, if Hitlery is stupid enough to go after Guiliani she will get her head handed to her. Her camp knows that. They won't go after Rudy.
I don't support Rudy.
She sure has the media on her side. No questions asked, no dirt, and no sling, just a smooth ride to the WH.
Very true. She is on Easy Street when it comes to the MSM.
I don't support Hillary of course... If you check the archives you'll find I was one of the first (if not THE first on FR) to suggest Thompson.
However, Hillary doesn't have any values... Just like her husband. If the polls said abortion was bad, she would be pro-life. If the polls said guns were good, she would be pro-gun. Hillary is a political animal... She just wants power. She would govern by the polls.
Bread and circuses, bread and circuses!!!
Oh..yes.
Most definitely she will do this..and have the MSM just hanging Rudy inch by inch, moment by moment...while Sandy Berger is walking around scot-free..just biding his time until he can get his security clearance back..
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