TERROR AS A TOOL Radar's Giuliani bumper sticker
GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is hoping to ride his 9/11 experience straight into the White House. But while "America's Mayor" is playing well in New Hampshire, New Yorkers directly impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy are less convinced.
In a recent New York Daily News poll, New Yorkers said they favor current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn't declared his candidacy, over "America's Mayor" by almost 2 to 1.
Howard Lutnick, the CEO of money management firm Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658 of his employees on 9/11 and whose brother died in the attack, has given Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign $4,600 of his own money over the last two months and has not given the Giuliani campaign a dime. Diny Ajamian, who as Cantor's human resources director worked with families of deceased employees and helped rebuild the company's staff, says she's disgusted by Giuliani's use of 9/11 as a political prop, adding that while Giuliani made plenty of public overtures to Cantor families in the immediate aftermath, he was virtually invisible two weeks later when she went to work for the firm. "It's absolutely disgraceful. He's just a sleazebag," Ajamian says. "I think now the families feel like he left them high and dry."