The reported indictment of Rudy Giuliani's high-profile former police commissioner sets in motion a new and challenging phase for the presidential campaign of the former New York mayor.
Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996, said the expected charges against Bernard Kerik - CNN, ABC, and the Associated Press reported last night that the indictment would be unsealed today - "raises a new round of questions about judgment, it will cause opposition researchers to dig in and find out if there are any other Bernie Keriks, and it will throw the campaign off its game."
"Rudy's had a pretty good ride, but he's starting to get some heat," Reed, who is not aligned with any GOP candidate, said yesterday. "Often, it's how a candidate deals with the incoming that is more important than the issue itself."
Giuliani appointed Kerik, a former police detective who had been Giuliani's campaign driver, to corrections commissioner, then promoted him to police commissioner for the final 16 months of Giuliani's eight-year tenure as mayor. A federal grand jury in New York has been investigating Kerik for about a year on allegations of income tax fraud and other wrongdoing while he was corrections chief. Earlier this year he rejected a plea deal and his lawyer insisted he had done nothing wrong.
Last year, Kerik pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor state ethics charges involving some of the same allegations. He was fined $221,000 for accepting $165,000 in renovations on his Bronx apartment by a company that was suspected of organized crime connections and that was seeking a license from the city in 2000.
Kerik was by Giuliani's side during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and their aftermath. He joined Giuliani's consulting firm in 2002. And in 2004, with Giuliani's recommendation, President Bush nominated Kerik to be secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security.
Kerik quickly withdrew, saying he had failed to pay taxes for a nanny. But a series of newspaper stories raised other legal and ethical questions about Kerik, including about the renovations. Kerik soon resigned from the Giuliani firm.
Yesterday at a campaign stop in Iowa, Giuliani told reporters: "I have pointed out that I think I made a mistake in not checking him out more carefully, but when you balance that mistake against all of the successes that we had and the reality that you make some mistakes and you make some correct decisions, I think the overwhelming record is a record of great success."
Giuliani has said he did not recall being briefed on Kerik's questionable associations before appointing him as police commissioner, though notes of meetings at that time indicate he was. Giuliani has also defended Kerik's job performance.
Kerik is not the only member of the administration to run into legal problems after Giuliani stepped down at the end of 2001.
Another is Russell Harding, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to embezzling about $400,000 and having child pornography on his city computer while head of the New York City Housing Development Corp. under Giuliani. The son of Raymond Harding, a key Giuliani political ally who threw the Liberal Party's support behind his mayoral campaigns, Russell Harding was appointed despite lack of a college degree or expertise in the field. He was sentenced to more than five years in prison. Two other officials pleaded guilty in the same case.
John H. Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, said the Giuliani administration "was a strange mix of extremely capable people and a surprising number of people sprinkled throughout who were there primarily because they were political supporters or tied to a constituency that was important to Giuliani."
Kerik, he said, was "a little bit different," combining features of both groups.
Mollenkopf, who has written extensively about city government, said he was surprised that Giuliani did not take note when he was briefed on Kerik's contacts with a business suspected of mob connections. "One of Giuliani's claims to fame is that his administration got the mob out of the Fulton Fish Market and the carting industry in the city," he said. "You would have thought this would have set off skyrockets."
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