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'Daily News' Gets Rudy's Prez Plans Left Behind in Hotel

By E&P Staff

Published: January 02, 2007 11:45 AM ET

NEW YORK We've all left something behind in a hotel room at least once -- a toothbrush, or slipper, or maybe even a set of keys. But now a GOP presidential hopeful, and former New York City mayor, tops just about everyone.

Left behind in a hotel room recently by Rudy Giuliani or one of his aides were 140 pages of printed text, handwriting and spreadsheets, now leaked to New York's Daily News by the campaign of a GOP rival. The tabloid in a front-page special today describes it as the "top-secret plan for Rudy Giuliani's bid for the White House."

Patrick Healy, writing in The New York Times this afternoon, comments, "The public disclosure of the document, which was leaked by a Giuliani adversary to The Daily News, is potentially damaging for Mr. Giuliani, given that he has portrayed himself as a leader on security issues and strategic planning.

"Indeed, for better or worse, he gained a reputation as mayor for tightly controlling and shaping public information; such a security breach in any presidential operation, but especially his, stands as an unusual embarrassment, as well as a boon to his potential opponents who want to know his thinking."

The Daily News report reveals that this "detailed dossier sets out the budgets, schedules and fund-raising plans that will underpin the former New York mayor's presidential campaign - as well as his aides' worries that personal and political baggage could scuttle his run.

"At the center of his efforts: a massive fund-raising push to bring in at least $100 million this year, with a scramble for at least $25 million in the next three months alone.

"The loss of the battle plan is a remarkable breach in the high-stakes game of presidential politics and a potentially disastrous blunder for Giuliani in the early stages of his campaign.

"The document was obtained by the Daily News from a source sympathetic to one of Giuliani's rivals for the White House. The source said it was left behind in one of the cities Giuliani visited as he campaigned for dozens of Republican candidates in the weeks leading up to the November 2006 elections.

"Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel suggested there were political dirty tricks behind the loss of the documents and called the timing suspicious."

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003526467

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200504060800.asp

When Steitz told me the story, I immediately thought of a minor sensation in Washington political circles in June 2002, when a Democratic Senate aide found a CD-ROM lying on the ground in Lafayette Park, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The aide had no idea what was on the unmarked disk, but soon found that it was the full text of two PowerPoint presentations. One was a slide show to accompany a speech by Rove, and the other was meant to accompany a presentation by Rove's top aide, Ken Mehlman, who at the time was White House political director and who would later become the manager of the president's reelection campaign.