Andrew Giuliani had the name ID and his famous father. He just didn’t have the votes.
“I always said I was going to be genuine with voters,” he mentioned in an interview Wednesday with POLITICO. “Whether they voted for me, or whether they didn’t, at least they can say that I was honest and was as genuine as possible.”
The youthful Giuliani was firm that his father’s outsized function in the marketing campaign and his assist of Trump didn’t harm his probabilities.
“Look, I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I worked four years for President Trump, and I’m certainly proud of my father and his many accomplishments. So whether that had a positive effect, whether it had a negative effect on voters, I’ll let other people break that down.”
If this yr’s Republican primaries are a barometer of the Trump model’s continued salience in the social gathering, the New York race was distinctive in that it prolonged to the legacy of his most colourful lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Andrew Giuliani, 36, got here in second by greater than 20 proportion factors behind the social gathering favourite, Zeldin. But the youthful Giuliani still carried most of his native New York City, exhibiting regional, if not statewide, affect.
The state social gathering this yr sought some distance from Trump. Not so with Giuliani. Though he’s by no means held elected workplace, Giuliani based mostly his marketing campaign on his years working as an adviser in the Trump White House and his father’s regular presence on the marketing campaign path.
When requested what Andrew Giuliani’s efficiency in the race indicated about each Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s continued affect amongst Republicans, State GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy mentioned the household legacy has laid a path for the candidate, who he mentioned “ran an admirable race.”
“Listen, Mayor Giuliani was our leader during 9/11,” Langworthy mentioned. “He’s certainly well known and well regarded by many, and that name has a lot of strength. Andrew’s a young, fresh face, and I think he’s got a bright future ahead of him.”
The Giuliani marketing campaign went higher than some anticipated, with his favorability amongst Republican voters polling close to or above Zeldin’s all through the marketing campaign regardless of sizable discrepancies in funding and endorsements.
To the shock of some ready for a extra combative Trump model, Giuliani revealed himself as an affable candidate, often accessible to media and taking a good-natured openness to new experiences, resembling befriending bovines amid a bull semen public sale upstate.
During one debate he tried to dial down his opponents’ extra laborious accusations of mendacity, imploring Zeldin and businessman Harry Wilson: “Let’s be mature here, guys. Let’s talk about the issues.”
He boldly appealed to the right-wing of the social gathering, suggesting that he believed Trump’s false claims that he received the 2020 election. He promised to reflect each Trump and his father if elected, and although he didn’t get an specific Trump endorsement, he earned the blessing of Trump confidantes resembling Steve Bannon, who described him as “born of the grit of two warriors.”
He was solely in a position to attend one in every of three televised debates in particular person as a result of he’s not vaccinated for Covid-19.
But it was his father who drove the extra sensational headlines all the way down to the remaining hours of the marketing campaign, reporting an apparently exaggerated assault from a Staten Island ShopRite worker whereas stumping for his son over the weekend.
The major additionally coincided with a day through which the former president’s legacy was additional broken amid new claims that Trump tried to hitch the violent rebel at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021.
Even GOP leaders say Rudy Giuliani’s presence could have reduce each methods for his son: Some Republican voters may have been completely satisfied to revisit a brand new era of the Giuliani model, however others may have been turned off by the never-ending ties to Trump and his scandal-scarred tenure in the White House.
“Some of the issues that he got into over the past five years could have hurt a little bit, even with our base. I’m not saying a lot, but could have,” mentioned Bernie Iacovangelo, Monroe County GOP chairman.
The extra sensible issue was that Andrew Giuliani — who Iacovangelo referred to as “a wonderful young man,” with “a bright future” — had no political expertise in comparison with Zeldin, a former state senator who’s now in his fourth congressional time period.
When it got here to rallying assist for the anticipated low-turnout major, social gathering officers had been driving votes towards their most well-liked candidate, Zeldin. So Republican voters who may have shortly checked a field for Giuliani by name affiliation alone may have been amongst those that stayed house, mentioned former congressman and Republican gubernatorial candidate John Faso.
“People who vote in a primary, they know who they are voting for ahead of time,” Faso mentioned. “It’s not someone who goes in undecided and says there’s a name there I recognize. It’s a different breed of voter than a general election voter.”
And Andrew Giuliani nonetheless completed effectively forward of former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who was making his second run for governor, and Wilson, who spent at the very least $6 million of his personal cash on the race. Giuliani most likely raised and spent not more than $1 million.
During his concession speech, Giuliani shortly implored his supporters to “lick our wounds tonight” however tomorrow “let’s get up and support the Republican nominee, Congressman Lee Zeldin, and let’s make him the 58th governor of the state of New York.”
He’s planning on being in New York politics for some time, he mentioned. And promised to proceed preventing “the way the Rudy Giulianis and the Donald Trumps have fought to hand a better city and a better country to us.”
That was all the time the Plan B, he mentioned Wednesday. He’s now not the rambunctious child made famous when he was performed by the late Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live, climbingon the podium at his father’s inauguration as mayor in 1994.
“When I spoke to Lee in the very beginning of his campaign, I told him ‘Look, you know, we’re going to be working together over the next decade to help the state of New York,” Andrew Giuliani mentioned Wednesday,
“We’re gonna have a little brotherly fight over here over the next year, but whoever ends up coming out on top — if it goes the other way — I’ll make sure that I back you.’”
