GREENVILLE, S.C. – Catherine Wrobel sat patiently the
other day in the warm autumn sun outside a local
coffeehouse named Spill the Beans, waiting to ask Rudy
Giuliani for an autograph.
Wrobel didn't want Giuliani to scribble his name on
just any old scrap of paper. She hoped to capture the
former New York mayor's signature on fresh-as-new copies
of two different newspapers.
Both were dated Sept. 12, 2001, and bore tragic black
headlines marking the searing moment when hijacked
airliners crashed like enemy missiles into the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon.
For Wrobel, 70, a political independent, and for others
holding conservative views in this key primary-election
state, their memory of Giuliani's actions as the
take-charge leader on Sept. 11 lies at the core of his
appeal as a presidential candidate.
“Looking at the way he pulled New York together as
mayor and then handled 9/11, I think he can help our
country,” Wrobel said. “Nine-eleven certainly was in my
lifetime the most horrendous thing that's happened in our
country. I'm afraid it could happen again if we're not
careful.”
For Giuliani, New York stands as a metaphor for his
political identity and what he could do for the country as
president. He presents himself as the tough-as-nails
former prosecutor who took a city viewed by conservatives
in South Carolina and elsewhere as crime-ridden, sinful
and full of welfare cheats and tamed it. And all of that
before Sept. 11.
To experts on South Carolina politics, that narrative
largely explains why Giuliani remains high in statewide
polls of likely voters in the Republican presidential
primary Jan. 19. A supporter of abortion rights, gay
rights and gun control, the former mayor has retained a
relatively high degree of public support for months
despite being out of step with the GOP faithful on a
number of social issues. Never mind that he also is
burdened with a checkered history of multiple marriages
and an unsettled family situation.
But there are risks in Giuliani's showcasing of his
mayoral record and his Sept. 11 role. Before the planes
hit the two towers, Giuliani was largely regarded as a
spent force in city politics, bearing the blame for
fanning racial tensions with intemperate language and
taking credit for an economic boom that many say was
attributable mainly to a soaring high-tech economy.
Moreover, his
response to the terrorist attacks triggered a bitter and
emotional feud with the International Association of Fire
Fighters. The group released a 13-minute video in mid-July
accusing the former mayor of providing New York
firefighters with faulty equipment, interfering with
search-and-rescue efforts and using the catastrophe to
fatten his bank account and advance his political
aspirations.
The New York Daily News quoted Jim Riches, a
deputy New York fire chief who lost a firefighter son in
the attacks, as pledging to expose Giuliani during the
campaign “to let the American people know what this man is
truly about, how arrogant he is and how he distorts the
truth.”
Giuliani also has detractors within the community of
victims who regard him as a publicity-seeking showboater.
Adding bite to that indictment is Giuliani's largely
no-show record after joining the bipartisan Iraq Study
Group, created by Congress in March 2006 to examine the
Iraq conflict and offer policy recommendations. He quit
after two months, citing time constraints arising from his
presidential campaign. At the time, there were news
reports that Giuliani was collecting speaking fees instead
of attending meetings.
For now at least, Giuliani seems to have an impressive
following among some social-conservative voters.
Looking up from lunch at a local fast-food restaurant,
Jean Jones, 69, a retired teacher, declared her intention
to vote for Giuliani.
“I am very pro-life, but there are other issues in this
election. If you wind up with Hillary Clinton as
president, how have you advanced the cause of life?” she
asked.
What resonates with voters such as Jones and others in
South Carolina with similar views is Giuliani's promise
that as president he would appoint conservative, “strict
constructionists” to the federal bench. To voters who
abhor abortion, that pledge offers a prospect of one day
seeing the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the 1973 Roe v.
Wade decision legalizing abortion.
But it is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York who
plays perhaps the most prominent role in Giuliani's
speeches.
Clinton is politically useful to Giuliani because her
image as a Democratic liberal enables the former mayor to
highlight his credentials as a fiscal conservative and
because her status as the Democratic front-runner stirs
deep foreboding among most Republicans, particularly
social conservatives. Analysts say it is not lost on those
voters that almost all poll matchups against Clinton show
Giuliani as the GOP's strongest general-election
candidate.
In an appearance this month before the York County
Republican organization in Rock Hill, S.C., Giuliani waved
what he described as his “Hillary list” – an itemization
of the costs of Clinton's campaign promises.
“Boy, has she just begun,” Giuliani said. “Hillary has
just begun to spend your money.”
That segued into an account of his record as a
crime-fighting, welfare-disciplining mayor.
His recent speeches in South Carolina assailed former
President Clinton for policies the former mayor says
weakened the military and America's intelligence agencies
and embraced “victory” as a goal for Iraq. But they
largely glossed over Sept. 11.
“Giuliani doesn't feel he needs to blow that horn,”
said J. David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson
University and co-director of the school's Palmetto Poll.
“He's talking about the present issue – the war on terror,
and standing tall and being tough – which I think is
really working with voters.”
Even so, Woodard and other analysts in South Carolina
say Giuliani remains vulnerable to attacks on his record
of social liberalism as well as his checkered family life
and his tenure in New York's City Hall.
Standing on the concrete apron just outside fire
station housing units, fire Lt. Steve Quinn, 38, expressed
reservations about Giuliani.
“I was raised a Southern Baptist, and I'm an extreme
right-wing conservative. I'm not for choice and all that
stuff,” Quinn said.
In addition, Quinn said he and his comrades at Mauldlin
Fire Station II have heard conflicting reports from New
York firefighters, including the harsh criticism that
Giuliani's decisions left them unprepared for the Sept. 11
catastrophe.
On the other hand, Quinn said, “I think Mr. Giuliani
could deal with Iraq, Afghanistan and other terrorist
kinds of things pretty well.”
Ferrell Guillory, a University of North Carolina expert
on Southern politics, noted that Giuliani's rivals have
yet to air negative ads on South Carolina television.
“The baggage is still there,” Guillory said. “It just
hasn't been delivered and thumped down in everybody's
living room.”
