Fresh Loaf

Jim Galloway with the details:

The fourth former GOP presidential candidate will make his way to Atlanta on Monday — that’s three days before Thanksgiving — to help Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss gather cash for the final week of his U.S. Senate runoff.

The price of the evening fund-raiser at the Linstrum + Matre Artworks is $500 per couple. They will take more if you insist.

The former mayor of New York, you’ll recall, took .7 percent of the vote in Georgia’s Republican presidential primary.

Giuliani’s last stop in Georgia — that I can remember at least — was a toe-touch in Marietta during his presidential run. That was a lot of fun.

Bookmark It

Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson wrote an excellent piece in the January 2007 issue examining Rudy Giuliani — presidential hopeful and “America’s mayor” — and his lucrative foray post-9/11 into the business and legal world. Bracewell & Giuliani — formerly known as Bracewell & Patterson before Mr. 9/11 joined the team — represents one of Georgia’s biggest polluters:

By the time Giuliani became part of [Bracewell & Paterson], in early 2005, it had also become the go-to law firm for major polluters: oil and gas as well as coal companies. Among its significant clients are Chevron/Texaco, Pacific Gas & Electric, Dynegy, Southern Company, Valero Energy, and Shell Oil.

Emphasis added. That fact’s been widely reported, known for quite some time, and notable if only because it shows a well-connected local company doing business with one of the nation’s most well-connected men. But included in Shnayerson’s piece is information about another company Giuliani’s firm represents: Macquarie, an Australian banking group that specializes in such public-private initiatives as toll roads and the uber-controversial Trans-Texas Corridor.

During his State of the State address, Gov. Sonny Perdue suggested that newly appointed DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham should oversee the State Road and Tollway Authority, which may hint at some more serious discussion of public-private initiatives. Abraham has said on record that the agency isn’t poised to take on such projects yet in its current mismanaged state, but she’s hinted in the past that it’s an area in which the DOT needs to explore its options.

For your enlightenment, read the VF piece about Giuliani. Note Macquarie’s dealings with the former mayor’s businesses and the opportunities those connections allowed. And just in case we hear some more concrete language from the state about allowing private companies to build and charge for access to roads, remember to keep the name of that Australian banking outfit filed somewhere in your mind.

Shnayerson ends the piece with a beautiful summation of just why any of this matters:

In the businesses that Giuliani built and bought these last six years, more deals have yet to be examined, more dots connected in the picture of his great financial success. But enough are there already, with lines between them, for a shape to have clearly emerged. It’s a picture of a politician leading a parade, as Mayor Giuliani so often did. Only the marchers behind him aren’t drum majorettes or wartime veterans or firefighters or police. They’re a ragtag band of Texas lawyers and energy lobbyists, penny-stock sharpies and security-industry entrepreneurs, agog with visions of the ultimate pay-to-play presidency.

Bookmark It

A man calling himself Rudy Giuliani astounded Marietta citizens yesterday by swooping down on the suburb and crashing a well-attended rally organized by supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Operating under the guise of a “campaign stop,” Giuliani took the The Good Doctor’s peaceful foot soldiers by surprise. While the followers of Paul’s dark horse campaign rallied in the park, Giuliani holed up with fellow Republicans Sen. Johnny Isakson and state House Speaker Glenn Richardson in the Brumby Chair Co., hoarding media that had surely intended to cover all things Ron. Supporters were aghast at how a guy who used to be the mayor of some city in the upper corner of the country could steal the media spotlight.

“I don’t know who this guy thinks he is,” said Marvin Finkelstein, a nonexistent ham radio enthusiast from Mableton, referring to Giuliani. “We wanted to visit the Square on a Sunday and rally up some supporters. Then ‘America’s Mayor’ — what does that mean, anyway — decides it’s time to check out rocking chairs. The gall!”

OK, so there was no Marvin Finkelstein, and it was really a Giuliani campaign stop that the Paul supporters crashed. But judging from the turnout, it was easy to get confused.

(more…)

Bookmark It

RUDY GIULIANI AT OGLETHORPE: “I was worried you were gonna ask about Bernard Kerik.”

GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani delivered his “I was mayor on 9/11, so vote for me” speech to a room of 200 or so supporters and onlookers last Wednesday at Oglethorpe University. The two-term New York mayor is credited with taking credit for the city’s drop in crime during the 1990s.

Although Giuliani’s Atlanta visit came a day after his much-talked-about declaration during a Republican debate in South Carolina that he’s pro-choice, nobody actually asked him about abortion or whether he thinks the position reduces his chances of winning the GOP nomination.

Additionally, no one asked him why, after the 1993 WTC bombing, he still thought it wise to put NYC’s terrorism response command center in the WTC complex. Nor did anyone ask him about his proposal to add an unelected, 9/11-justified “emergency” extension to his second mayoral term.

If elected, Giuliani would become the first bald president since Ford and the first elected bald president since Eisenhower.

Bookmark It

4.5 presidential candidates are coming to Atlanta this week.

Why 4.5?

Newt acts like he’s running, but he hasn’t declared.

Check them out while you can. Georgia is solidly Republican, so the likelihood of seeing them in 2008 outside the doors of a high-dollar fundraiser event is pretty low.

In strictly nonpartisan, alphabetical order:

Hillary Clinton: Sat., May 19, 7 p.m., at the home of Michael Coles ($1,000 to get in)

John Edwards: Thurs., May 17, 5:15 p.m., Georgia World Congress Center (free)

Newt Gingrich: Fri., May 18, Borders bookstore in Buckhead at 4 p.m., GOP Convention at Gwinnett Civic Center at 7 p.m.

Rudy Giuliani: Wed., May 16, noon, Emerson Student Center at Oglethorpe University (free)

Mitt Romney: Fri., May 18, 3-3:30 p.m., Gwinnett Civic Center (free, for those in the convention hall)

Bookmark It