As the Republican presidential field shapes up, “America’s mayor’’ is considering another shot at becoming America’s president. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, “is still considering it, very definitely,’’ said Wayne Semprini, Giuliani’s 2008 New Hampshire state chairman.
Giuliani plans to visit New Hampshire, home of the first primary, next month. It will be his third visit to the state this year. According to Semprini and Giuliani’s New Hampshire spokeswoman, Alicia Preston, Giuliani will meet with Republican groups, reconnect with friends, and raise funds for other organizations, but not for his own run.
Semprini and Preston said Giuliani’s goal is to put a Republican in the White House. “If he saw someone who he felt very definitely was likable enough and strong enough and tough enough to take on the current president then he would get behind that person,’’ Semprini said. “Whether he’s seen that person yet, I don’t know. . . . As of now, he’s still weighing it.’’
Semprini said Giuliani would campaign on his credentials as a fiscal conservative and his record of reducing crime, improving education, and “turning the city around economically.’’
As a social moderate who supports abortion rights, Giuliani could alienate some conservative Republicans. Dante Scala, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, said Giuliani could also have a tough time as a former mayor competing against former governors.
“There was a lot of glamour that attached to him in ’08 as ‘America’s mayor,’ ’’ Scala said. “That’s a decade old. It will be a bit tougher to run now.’’ — SHIRA SCHOENBERG
“In 2009 I had the sense if she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself,’’ Frank Bailey said. Palin’s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years’’ is due out today and is based on tens of thousands of e-mails that Bailey said he kept during his time with Palin. It began with working on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and continued through her failed run for vice president in 2008 and her brief stint as governor.
The Alaska attorney general’s office has said it is investigating Bailey’s use of the e-mails. Executive ethics laws bar former public officials from using information acquired during their work for personal gain if the information hasn’t been publicly disseminated.
The state has yet to release thousands of Palin e-mails. Bailey’s attorney has said Bailey took great care to ensure his writings were consistent with legal requirements.
Billed as the first Palin book by a former aide, “Blind Allegiance’’ bolsters a perception of Palin as self-serving while casting Bailey as her enforcer, willing to do the dirty work, no questions asked.
Bailey became embroiled in an investigation of Palin’s firing of her police commissioner over allegations the commissioner would not fire trooper Mike Wooten, who had had a bitter divorce from Palin’s sister. Bailey was caught on tape questioning a State Police official about why Wooten was still employed.
Bailey, who was Palin’s director of boards and commissions, was put on leave after news of the recording broke, though he says his actions were with the prodding of Palin’s husband, Todd.
Despite this, and what he describes as campaigns by Sarah Palin over the years to tear down others who have crossed or confronted her, he stuck around.
To speak up when he saw things he didn’t agree with “went against all that investment of time and energy that I put into her,’’ said Bailey. He said he “shed his family,’’ his wife and two children, to focus on Palin during her rise to the governor’s office and beyond. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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