Rudy and judith giuliani, She brought enough political baggage to fill a Louis Vuitton trunk. Indeed, part of Rudy Giuliani's presidential flameout can be traced back to his Judi - the woman he fell for in a cigar bar in 1999 while he was the married mayor with a wife and two young children at home.
"She was a major part of the reason for Giuliani's collapse," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Rudy wanted to head up the 'family values' party, and Judi didn't fit that label. Even worse, Giuliani was estranged from his children.
Their refusal to campaign for him spoke volumes to voters."
Among the low notes that brought national embarrassment to the one-time GOP frontrunner: her use of taxpayer-funded NYPD detectives as personal valets and chauffeurs while she was the mayor's mistress; revelations of a secret past marriage; and interrupting Giuliani's speech to the National Rifle Association with a cutesy cell phone call to say hi.
Mike McKeon, the campaign aide who was in charge of handling Mrs. Giuliani's national "roll-out" last March, said that despite her lack of campaign chops, she was an experienced public speaker who would remain on the trail.
"Judith is nothing but an asset, and, as the campaign continues, she's going to be a larger and larger asset," he had said. "She'll be one of our key surrogates."
Never happened. Judith Giuliani was rolled back inside the campaign tent as fast as she was rolled out.
Doubts emerged early about the former pharmaceutical sales rep's ability to be a polished stand-in for her husband.
At her first public appearance, a March fund-raiser in Manhattan, an unscripted Mrs. Giuliani rambled in front of 1,000 supporters. Guests winced when she talked about their first dates (he was a married man) and her ability to "pick up the phone as Judith Giuliani" and get the rich and famous to donate to her pet causes.
The rest of the month did not go much better. The former mayor's 21-year-old son, Andrew, said he would not be campaigning for his dad. "There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife," he told an interviewer, exposing a deep family rift that remains.
Ten days later, the Daily News unearthed evidence of an earlier Las Vegas marriage, forcing her to concede she had been married not twice, but three times.
Giuliani also had to retract a comment during a Barbara Walters interview that, if elected, he'd allow his wife - a graduate of a two-year nursing program with no college degree - to sit in on cabinet meetings.
Press accounts were not flattering either, describing the 53-year-old Hazleton, Pa., native as a social climber who liked to spend Giuliani's post-9/11 cash.
In a Vanity Fair profile last fall, a Giuliani aide remarked that an "entire airplane seat was needed for Judith's 'Baby Louis' - a reference to her expensive Louis Vuitton handbag - which sits in solitary splendor on her travels."
Except for the past few weeks, where a doting Judith accompanied her husband on the stump in Florida, she largely remained behind the scenes.
Speaking to supporters in Orlando Tuesday night after he placed a distant third in a state where he once held a commanding lead,
Giuliani turned first to his Judith, thanking her "for being a loving, patient and supportive partner."
"Rudy would have been in this boat even without her," said a longtime Giuliani associate. "But she wasn't an asset. She brought a lot of it on herself."
9 years ago
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