Giuliani Blames 'Lack Of Leadership' For Albany Mess

By Elizabeth Benjamin | Daily News
06/18/2009

Rudy Giuliani this morning slammed "everybody" in Albany for the current chaos, but seemed to particularly blame the man who might be planning to challenge in 2010 - Gov. David Paterson - for his "lack of leadership."

Asked on "Good Day New York" to assess Paterson's handling of the situation, Giuliani replied:

"I don't think anybody's handling the situation right now. It's one of these things where I think everybody gets blamed for it. The reality is they're in a state of confusion, and they can't seem to even have enough ability to reach some kind of bipartisan conclusion about leadership. And it would seem to me that that's probably what's wrong with the state' right now: A lack of leadership."

On whether he will be running for governor next year, Giuliani, who laughed heartily at the question, replied:

"Well, it's something I have to decide sometime this year, but I haven't really focused on it very much right now. And given the confusion in Albany, it's hard to figure out what's going on up there right now."

A propos of nothing in particular, Giuliani did bring up the "9 percent increase in spending" approved by the governor and the Legislature in the 2009-2010 budget (an increase the Paterson administration has said is actually largely due to stimulus funds), calling it a "disaster."

The former mayor is sounding more and more like a candidate, no?

He also accused Paterson of setting the Legislature in "exactly the wrong direction," adding he thinks the budget was "out of balance when they did it...(because) they could not discipline themselves in any way at all to reduce spending."

"If you don't have executive discipline about spending, you have no discipline about spending," Giuliani said. "...I think right now, the state is heading very much in the wrong direction; this latest incident is just kind of a symptom about that."

Statewide polls have consistently shown Giuliani blowing Paterson out of the water in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups, although if the Democratic candidate is AG Andrew Cuomo, that's an entirely different matter.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

We are excited to have you join us! To get involved, please register below. Together we can make New York great again!

Enter your e-mail address.
Enter the password that accompanies your e-mail.
  • Sign in using Facebook

Blog

You now have the ability to blog about Rudy (or really anything you like). Just register, login, and hit blog in the top menu bar. When you submit an entry, it will be placed in the "Recent Posts" page, which can be accessed and read by all members of the DraftRudy community. Your post can also be promoted to the front blog page for everyone to see. It's that easy, so start writing.

Share

This new version of DraftRudy was built with you and your community in mind. While we are in the early stage of this movement we need as many people to join and take part as possible. Use Facebook Connect with your account and invite all of your Facebook friends. Make a blog post or a comment on the blog and post it to your Facebook Wall. Follow us on Twitter. Tweet about our site. Use your imagination ;)

What do you want to see?

Let us know what you think. We have posted a Suggestions page which can be accessed in the footer of this website. Tell us what you like about the site, and what you don't like. Tell us what features you think will make this site even better. We will constantly be building up this site so any suggestions you have will definitely be helpful.