There are failsons who would rethink their own plans to run for office if their dad was crying about how he was being treated like “the head of a drug cartel or a terrorist.”
And then there’s Andrew Giuliani, who announced Tuesday that he’s running for governor of New York as a Republican in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican since the unaccomplished 35-year-old first-time candidate was old enough to legally buy a pack of cigarettes.
That might strike some as a fool’s errand but Andrew is all for fool’s errands. Until this year, he was most famous for interrupting one of his dad’s press conferences as a kid in a performance that became a Saturday Night Live skit and probably most famous as an adult for suing Duke varsity golf team for damages and the right to use Duke’s golf center for the rest of his life after he was cut. Andrew, whose scores put him on the bottom half of the team, admitted, according to The New York Times, that “he may have misbehaved in February when he tossed an apple in a teammate’s face, flipped his putter a few feet, threw and broke a club and gunned his engine in a parking lot.” One federal judge called the case “a swing and a miss” before a second one tossed the suit altogether.
The apple really did fall from the tree here, never mind what Andrew told Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post this week about how he is “a politician out of the womb. It’s in my DNA.” Before his father was elected mayor, he’d been the U.S Attorney for the Southern District (which may now be on the verge of prosecuting the old boss who’s since lost his marbles and his morals) and the number three official in the Justice Department. Before the son ran for governor, he’d been one of the Trump White House’s lesser failsons. While Jared was tasked with big things like letting people in blue states die of COVID and peace in the Middle East (heckuva job, Jared) Andrew was the “sports liaison,” making $95,000 a year to occasionally golf with Trump.
Speaking of fathers and sons, Republican Rudy Giuliani crossed party lines back in 1994 to endorse Mario Cuomo, who nonetheless fell short in his bid for a fourth term in a very weird race that also included an aborted run by Howard Stern. Now Andrew Giuliani is bumbling into an already crowded Republican field to try and stop Andrew Cuomo, Mario’s son, from his own likely bid for a fourth term.
Little Andrew G. is hoping the Giulianis could become a dynasty like the Kennedys or the Cuomos, telling the Post that “Giuliani vs. Cuomo. Holy smokes. It's Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. We can sell tickets at Madison Square Garden.” But no one thinks that Andrew, last seen whining about how the feds are picking on his dad, could sell tickets. New York has lots of crappy dynasties, but the Giulianis really would be the crappiest.
After consulting with ex-New Yorker Donald Trump, Andrew told Politico, “We talked about New York politics and went through the numbers on this, and I explained to him where I think I would be able to make inroads that no other potential candidate would be able to.” Hm: Trump, who once flirted with running for governor himself before descending that golden escalator in 2015, got 36 percent of the state vote in 2016 and 37.7 percent in 2020. And not only is Trump, who also likes one of the minimally qualified candidates already in the race, Lee Zeidlin, no kingmaker in the state, but he’s also been blowing off Andrew’s dad’s pleas for help since the feds raided Rudy’s office and apartment last month.
This afternoon, Andrew formally announced his run for governor at Battery Place on the southern tip of Manhattan—about as close to Albany as his father is to sane, sober judgment—to a few reporters as a water taxi drowned him out at one point. In front of a few signs and a handful of journalists, the former Newsmax contributor mused about ending “bail reform” and how he would “light the economic furnace in New York.”
He also put out a long, garbly campaign ad online: “Like our mighty waters, we New Yorkers are facing turbulent times… like my parents before me, New York is in my blood. I’ve been raised through New York.”
Just before his big day, little Giuliani told the New York Post that “When I do go get inaugurated governor, I have to give my dad a bad seat. He might be looking for payback.” But it seems far likelier that Rudy will end up in jail than his son will end up in the governor’s mansion.
