Former mayor Rudy Giuliani is in Florida today, skipping the Iowa caucus that his team never counted on anyway. Still, his staffers are trying to remain relevant in Iowa by "contacting reporters, reminding them that even though the former New York mayor is lagging badly [in Iowa]...he will remain a player in the big states that hold their primaries in upcoming weeks."
We kept Giuliani on the brain by reading Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker feature in this week's New Yorker. The essay goes over some of Giuliani's greatest blunders (like hiring the son of the Liberal Party chairman to head the Housing Development Corporation, only for the hire to eventually embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars), personality and general working dynamic. Our favorite quote:
Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, who served as commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration under Giuliani, has described the dynamic among the Mayor’s top aides—the so-called “yes-Rudy’s”—this way: “If Rudy would say, ‘Let’s kill twelve-year-olds,’ there would be a deep silence in the room and then somebody would say, ‘That’s brilliant! ’ And then somebody else would say, ‘Have you thought of thirteen-year-olds, too?’ ”
Our second favorite quote is from Jerome Hauer, who started the Office of Emergency Management during the Giuliani administration. Hauer, who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Kolbert, “From my perspective, Rudy would be a very dangerous President. And I think people need to be very frightened of him. When you look at the way he picked battles unnecessarily as mayor, imagine if he’s got nuclear weapons at his disposal."
Another way Giuliani might try to remind the public he's around is some very provocative advertising that involves images of Middle East violence - and the remains of the World Trade Center. See the ad after the jump:
