Rudy Still Mum On 2008 Plans, Still High In Polls

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who continues to score high in polls on the 2008 Presidential election although he has studiously avoided any announcement that he's running, has tongues wagging again after announcing that he's going to Iowa on May 1 to be keynote speaker at a dinner for a gubernatorial candidate there.

It will be Giuliani's first major political foray in months and it will come two weeks after the ex-mayor's friend and political rival, Senator John McCain, visits the same state.

Despite all the speculation that Giuliani is perhaps dipping his toe just a little bit further into the Presidential pool, his spokesperson, Sunny Mindel, is telling reporters that the Iowa trip is merely what he said it was to support Congressmember Jim Nussle, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, in his bid to become Iowa's governor.

Mindel added that Giuliani is doing all he can to help GOP candidates fundraising for the Iowa state GOP and give a motivational speech in Des Moines.

Giuliani can afford the luxury of soft pedaling any presidential talk this far in advance of the 2008 elections. He continues to show that his political stock is still robustly high, and the fact that Nussle and other candidates are in this year's crucial midterm elections. Afterward, she said, he'll make a decision as to his

future in politics, i.e., the 2008 presidential election. I

He consistently ranks high in straw polls, the most recent being the "Thermometer" national survey taken earlier this month by Quinnipiac University. Giuliani came out number one with a 63.5 percent rating, about 3.5 points better than his closest pursuer, Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois.

Others in Giuliani's wake were McCain and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered two of the frontrunners in the 2008 election. In a more recent poll, this one by Time Magazine reported in the press last Saturday, Giuliani topped out at 64 percent and McCain at 61. Clinton is trailing.

So just by being a good soldier in the Republican Party and going around the country to help needy candidates get re-elected, Giuliani is doing himself and the party a world of good and he's stacking innumerable political chips away, to be called in perhaps at a future time.

Giuliani already has a resume that, in addition to his national popularity, could make him a formidable candidate. Prior to getting elected New York City's mayor twice, he was a successful prosecutor, giving him impeccable anti-crime and antiterror credentials.

As mayor, he continued in the anti-crime mode, bringing the city's crime rate down to record low levels, and he capped off his eight-year career in City Hall with his performance on 9/11 forever etched in the nation's mind.

D'AMATO FEUDING WITH GOP: Former U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato, once the darling of the Republican Party in New York state, now seven years out of office is injecting serious disunity and confusion into the organization, which has already had serious problems finding credible candidates to oppose perhaps the strongest Democratic slate in decades.

With New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton far ahead of the field in their respective races for governor and senator, D'Amato is waging a political war against William Weld, one of the leading GOPgubernatorial contenders. In the process, he raked senatorial contender Kathleen Troia McFarland over the coals, too.

There's been bad blood between D'Amato and Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, since 1993 when Weld's protege Robert Mueller, then a federal prosecutor, unsuccessfully prosecuted D'Amato's brother, Armand. The D'Amato's both felt the case against them was undertaken purely for personal reasons.

The former senator, who now talks favorably of Spitzer, says Weld does not represent the hopes and aspirations of working-, middle-class families.

He has also dumped on McFarland as a weak candidate and on Jeanine Pirro as a flawed and vulnerable candidate for state attorney general.

D'Amato has drawn support from state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long and other veteran conservatives, who are supporting John Faso as the Republican choice for governor.

Meanwhile, with only five months until September, there appears to be a good chance a Republican primary election to pick a gubernatorial candidate, since the party headed by Governor George Pataki has yet to settle on a choice.

DEM A G CANDIDATE: For his first television ad as a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, Sean Patrick Maloney issued a proposal to "legalize" the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program using a complaint that can be filed in federal court.

Maloney said the complaint would seek a federal court order requiring the Bush Administration to comply with the law. Maloney is a former senior official in the Clinton White House and an investigative attorney.

Leading the field of Democrats seeking the nomination for the A G spot are Andrew Cuomo and Mark Green.