LACONIA, N.H. - After a Thanksgiving lull, the campaigns of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani locked horns over their crime and fiscal records yesterday in New Hampshire, where both candidates are spending a full weekend on the stump as the first presidential nominating contests loom less than seven weeks away.
Giuliani, in an interview with the Associated Press, singled out the case of the Massachusetts judge appointed by Romney who released without bail a convicted killer now charged with slaying a young couple in Washington state. Romney has already said that the judge, Kathe M. Tuttman, should resign, but Giuliani criticized his rival for the Republican presidential nomination.
"The governor is going to have to explain his appointment, and the judge is going to have to explain her decision, but it's not an isolated situation," Giuliani told AP. "Governor Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime."
Daniel T. Tavares Jr. completed a 16-year sentence for manslaughter for killing his mother this year, but prosecutors tried to keep him in prison for allegedly assaulting two prison guards. In July, Tuttman overturned a district court judge's decision to hold Taveres on $50,000 bail and freed him on personal recognizance.
Tavares surfaced in Graham, Wash., and on Monday, he was arrested for allegedly shooting to death Brian Mauck, 30, and Beverly Mauck, 28.
Romney's campaign on Friday called Tuttman's decision to release Tavares "an inexplicable lapse in judgment," and urged her to resign. Romney appointed Tuttman in 2006, after Tuttman had spent 17 years as a state prosecutor.
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said last night, "It's troubling that Mayor Giuliani would politicize this tragedy. . . . As far as Judge Tuttman goes, Governor Romney believes she should be held accountable."
On fiscal issues, Romney hit first, jabbing Giuliani's stewardship of New York's finances during his eight years as mayor. At a morning stop in Amherst, the former Massachusetts governor accused Giuliani of leaving a "budget gap twice as big as the one he inherited: over $3 billion." Romney also took issue with one of the leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a GOP rival, whom he called a liberal on fiscal issues.
Giuliani's campaign shot back immediately. Two top Massachusetts Republicans who are supporting Giuliani, former governor Paul Cellucci and former treasurer Joseph Malone, told reporters that Romney failed to achieve his goal of a rollback of the state income tax from 5.3 percent to 5 percent, as voters had called for in a 2000 referendum.
"He said one thing and did not get it done," said Cellucci, who, with Malone, was accompanying Giuliani on the first day of a two-day bus tour through southern New Hampshire, which will hold the first presidential primary on Jan. 8.
"Rudy Giuliani got results as mayor," Cellucci said, and left his successor, Michael Bloomberg, with a balanced budget when he left office in the middle of a fiscal year. The projected deficit was in the next fiscal year.
Cellucci and Malone criticized Romney, saying that he increased fees and raised the tax burden in Massachusetts by shifting the burden onto local property tax bases and raising corporate taxes by closing loopholes.
At an afternoon town hall meeting in Nashua, Giuliani said no one disputes that he brought New York's chronic fiscal problems under control and touted his tax-cutting record as unparalleled in the Republican field.
"I am beating my closest rival, 23 to nothing in cutting taxes," he said.
Budget watchdog groups in New York have said that seven of the 23 tax cuts Giuliani takes credit for were initiated by the state, and an eighth, the largest of the 23, was scheduled to expire anyway.
During four years as governor, Romney initiated several relatively small, targeted tax cuts that were approved by the Legislature.
Giuliani, leads the GOP field in national polls but trails Romney in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3, and New Hampshire. He has stepped up his emphasis in New Hampshire, launching a series of three television ads on New Hampshire and Boston television. The ads tout his mayoral achievements, including record cuts in welfare, crime, and taxes.
During a stop yesterday in Manchester, Giuliani picked up the endorsement of Mayor Frank Guinta, a Republican, who joined Giuliani's three-bus caravan for the later event in Nashua.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
