Rudy Giuliani's Bad Day

Former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, had a real bad news day yesterday.

First, the news broke that "America's Mayor" had been booted off the Iraq Study Group (a perfect venue for someone needing some foreign policy experience, right?) because he never showed up for meetings and he was too busy making $$$ giving speeches.

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

And:

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why -- the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Here's Giuliani's response:

Once again, the paper wrote a story with little regard to the facts. The facts are these - as someone considered a potential presidential candidate, the Mayor didn’t want the group’s work to become a political football. That, coupled with time constraints, led to his decision.

But Greg Sargent over at TPMCafe's "Election Central" debunks that pretty handily:

Rudy's role with the ISG was announced in March of 2006. This was presumably done with Rudy's consent. That means that Rudy was willing to serve on the ISG in March of 2006, right? Right.

As it turns out, Rudy himself was openly telling reporters that he was a potential candidate for President many months earlier than this.

Sargent's conclusion:

Rudy himself was saying that he was a "potential Presidential candidate" five months before agreeing to join the ISG. He even openly stated that he'd be actively considering a run during the same year -- 2006 -- that the ISG would be doing its work. So why did Rudy join it in the first place?

His campaign is now saying that he backed out of his ISG commitment because the fact that he was seen as a potential candidate could politicize his work for the panel -- even though that didn't stop him from signing up in the first place.

Yea.

Then there's the (alleged - and indicted) coke dealer who'd been working for his campaign in South Carolina:

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division has just announced that State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has been indicted by federal jury on cocaine distribution charges.Ravenel, who was elected last fall, was named the Chairman of presidential candidate Rudy Giualiani’s (R-N.Y.) South Carolina campaign in April.

Here's the indictment. Here's the response from the Giuliani Camp:

Our campaign has no information about the accusations pending against Mr. Ravenel. Mr. Ravenel has stepped down from his volunteer responsibilities with the campaign.

Notice the campaign is very careful to insert the word "volunteer" into the second sentence. Saying, of course, that Ravenel was definitely not being paid by the Giuliani campaign. But shouldn't the campaign have tossed Ravenel's butt out the door before Ravenel "stepped down"? From the text it's implied that it was Ravenel's act to remove himself from the Giuliani campaign. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

Still, not a good news cycle for Rudy Giuliani.