GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
The ‘Giuliani is too liberal to win the nomination’ meme continues to plague both the MSM and conservative media but we have seen, in recent weeks, some modest re-evaluation of this conventional wisdom.
In this week’s Evans & Novak political report, Bob Novak takes note of Californian Bill Simon’s efforts on behalf of the Mayor.? Simon has impeccable conservative credentials and his support may be a?harbinger of other conservatives’ willingness to give Giuliani a hearing.?
Giuliani: California conservative Republican Bill Simon, the party’s nominee for governor in 2002, has begun building a network of support in the Golden State for the prospective presidential campaign of his old boss, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R). Simon, son of the late secretary of the Treasury William Simon, was Republican nominee for governor of California in 2002. He was a prosecutor working for Giuliani, then U.S. attorney in New York City, in 1986-88.
Simon has been arranging get-acquainted meetings for Giuliani with prominent California conservatives to show them he is not all that liberal and really is a Republican.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:49 pm
OK, this isn’t motivated by bias (I am a “G-Man”, as someone on this cite termed it), but I have to dispute the significance of this.
Simon is endorsing Rudy because the two of them worked together for many years at the Justice Department. Rudy thought highly enough of Simon during his tenure that he endorsed Simon over Richard Riordan (the moderate former LA Mayor often linked/ compared to Rudy Giuliani) in the California Gubenatorial primary in 2002. Rudy’s endorsement was widely seen as a huge boost to Simon; frankly it would be a bigger story if Simon did NOT return the favor.
And the fact is, Simon isn’t exactly the darling of conservatives in California. Once he secured the nomination, he revealed himself to be an absolutely stunningly incompetent candidate, losing to an incumbent governor with a 25% approval rating. And the only reason the race was even nominally close was that the Green Party candidate got over 5% of the vote, despite the fact that his campaign was virtually nonexistent.
Personally, I think that Rudy can appeal to enough so-cons to win the
nomination and that, once he does, he will be an unbeatable candidate
in November. But Simon’s endorsement really isn’t evidence of this.