Who’s The Worse New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani or Eric Adams?

Remember When Giuliani Almost Ran For President?

Just over a week ago, as a way of noting his indictment in Georgia for his role in Trump’s failed coup, the NY Times published a column by Jamelle Bouie, Rudy Giuliani Was Always Like This. Bouie wrote that Fani Willis “charged Giuliani with 13 counts related to election tampering, including ‘solicitation of violation of oath by public officer’ and ‘conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree’ … under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or RICO) Act. The irony, of course, is that Giuliani made his name as a U.S. attorney using the federal RICO Act to undermine and dismantle the mob.”

It didn’t slip past Bouie that many commentators—primarily those outside New York— are asking how it’s possible that “America’s Mayor,” who some see as “the archetypal tough-on-crime and law-and-order politician,” could come to such disgrace. That’s easy to answer for many New Yorkers: it’s based on “a mistaken premise. It assumes there’s something different about Giuliani— that there was, at some point, a decisive break in Giuliani’s personality or political beliefs that placed him on his current trajectory. But there wasn’t. The line from ‘America’s mayor’ to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one. The answer to What happened to Rudy Giuliani? is Nothing happened. He is the same man he’s always been… [I]f we think of Giuliani as the personification of American resilience in the face of terrorism, then his turn against democracy and the rule of law is bewildering and inexplicable. But if we think of Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York’s first Black mayor for his own gain, then there’s little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of ’92 from the Giuliani of ’23.”

Even at the moment of his greatest political triumph, Giuliani was a fraught and divisive figure. It was the press that labeled him “America’s mayor.” That the epithet continued to stick through the subsequent decade, in the face of scandal and political failure, is only a testament to the persistence of myth in American political coverage, because it is only after internalizing the myth of Giuliani that anyone could be shocked by his steadfast allegiance to Trump.

With clear eyes, it is easy to see that the two men are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner— it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term— and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes.

If there is a question to ask in the wake of Giuliani’s indictment, it isn’t What happened to Rudy? but rather, why was it so hard for so many people to see the truth of who, and what, he always was?

And now prosecutors clear across the country, in Arizona, are grappling with those questions as they probe Giuliani’s role as fake-elector kingpin. Last week Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng reported in the past several weeks, state prosecutors have been asking questions about the former New York mayor who became a ringleader in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election… Prosecutors appear particularly interested in a number of notable meetings and phone calls, including a late November 2020 meeting with members of Arizona’s state legislature convened by the Trump legal team, which aired bogus claims of voter fraud and lobbied lawmakers to ‘take over’ the state’s selection of electors.”

The investigation isn’t only about the 11 Republicans who falsely claimed to be the state’s legitimate electors; it’s also about higher up in the scheme, like Giuliani, who “convened the meeting of 15 state legislators at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix in late November 2020, casting it as a ‘hearing’ of the state’s legislature despite its unofficial status. The meeting appeared to be part of the Trump campaign’s pressure campaign to prevent the state from certifying Biden’s win. Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey certified the state’s legitimate electors the same day.”

Rawnsley and Suebsaeng reported that “Trump called into the meeting and blasted Ducey, who he said ‘couldn’t [certify the electoral count] fast enough,’ warning that ‘Arizona will not forget what Ducey just did.’ Giuliani meanwhile urged the assembled lawmakers to ‘take over the conduct of this election because it’s being conducted irresponsibly and unfairly,’ according to the House January 6 Committee’s final report. Giuliani had initially pressed Rusty Bowers, then Arizona’s Republican House speaker, during a phone call with Trump to hold an official legislative hearing. But Bowers refused, testifying later that he feared an official hearing would create a ‘circus’ atmosphere and make him a ‘pawn.’”

Bowers told the January 6 Committee that Giuliani met with both him and other Arizona legislators after the Phoenix conference, where they “aggressively questioned” the two over their claims of thousands of dead and undocumented voters. Giuliani allegedly asked Bowers and other state legislators to help in recalling the state’s electors for Biden, which the state had certified that same day. Bowers refused.

“We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani said, according to Bowers.