Last week was fairly devastating for Rudy Giuliani, at least as far as revelations go, when we learned over the span of several days that he charged NYC taxpayers for romantic rendezvous weekends with his mistress, his mistress’ security detail, and his mistress’ chores (NYPD walked her dog), and then hid the costs in obscure mayoral budget accounts.
But what’s the fallout? According a piece in the Observer, Giuliani’s supporters are “unsettled.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to have second thoughts,” said Garry Biniecki, the undersheriff of Sanilac County in Michigan, whom the Giuliani campaign recently rolled out as a “Michigan Leader.”
Mr. Biniecki said that his support for the former mayor originally stemmed from Mr. Giuliani’s performance on Sept. 11, but he described himself as “a little gun shy” after all the recent coverage: stories about the indictment of his former Police Chief Bernard Kerik, and then, last week, an unflattering report about the ways in which Mr. Giuliani’s administration accounted for his personal security expenses.
“It doesn’t sit well,” Mr. Biniecki said. “And then you wonder what else there is.”
“You have to be honest, and if you are not honest, it will get the best of you, it really will,” said Rhona Charbonneau, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee and a Giuliani supporter.
Good point. It’s a shame, then, that Tony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s chief political adviser, proceeded to offer a defense for Shag Fund that was anything but “honest.”
Mr. Carbonetti argued that it took some time to settle on a defense — Mr. Giuliani’s original reaction was that it was a political “hit job” — because he needed time to go through the hundreds of pages of documents. He said the documents ultimately showed that the accounting was filtered through the other city agencies in an effort to expedite the payment of travel expenses to vendors.
Two weeks later, and these guys still can’t get over this already-debunked talking point? New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has rejected this argument completely.
But the current New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today he knew of no problems with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor, when Kelly served under Mayor David Dinkins, or since.
“I don’t recall anybody, any statements about delay,” Kelly told reporters.
He said all bills for the police details for Dinkins and now for Mayor Mike Bloomberg are handled directly “through the police department.”
Kelly also told the Observer that during his two stints as the head of the Police Department, “detectives assigned to the mayor’s security detail file all of their expenses through the department and they’re reimbursed through the department.”
To do otherwise, obviously, is to try to hide the expenditures.
No wonder Giuliani’s supporters are “unsettled.”