Andrew Giuliani has been an obnoxious twit for so long that when his father Rudy was elected mayor of New York in 1993, it wasn’t out of line for Saturday Night Live to lampoon him by having Chris Farley portray the out-of-control seven-year-old.
The young Giuliani eventually took up golf, got pretty good at it, and started playing with one of his dad’s rich New York asshole friends, Donald Trump. He joined the golf team at Duke, got kicked off the team basically for allegedly being an asshole, and like so many other assholes, including his father, eventually found a happy landing spot in the Trump White House, as Special Assistant to the President (golf buddy) and Associate Director of the Office of Public Liaison (setting up McDonald’s orders for sports teams’ visits).
The younger Giuliani’s bid to become governor of New York, launched Tuesday, is a grift in the model of his father and his mentor, and while Trump somehow wound up getting elected president, the Eric Trump-lookalike scion of the Giuliani family has never had The Donald’s charisma. We’ve known that since he was a little shit as a seven-year-old. And it was clear when his former Duke golf teammates did not sign his letter seeking reinstatement to the team after a variety of allegations including breaking a club, gunning his car engine in the parking lot, and throwing an apple at a teammate. He was an asshole, and they were glad to be rid of him. (Guiliani claimed the allegations were fabricated so that the coach could reduce the size of the team).
There are actual, legitimate candidates already in the GOP race with actual, legitimate political experience and actual, legitimate ability to build a campaign, including Congressman Lee Zeldin and former Westchester County executive Rob Astorino. These are also bozos who have little to no chance of defeating Andrew Cuomo — even as much as he sucks — let alone any of Cuomo’s potential primary challengers, all of whom would be more in line with the state’s political demographics while not having the stink of being Andrew Cuomo on them.
What Giuliani will be able to do is separate idiots from campaign contributions, which is what this is really about, as well as a public way to try to restore some luster to the family name, if not honor or dignity, as those went out the window long ago. It’s the same thing that Giuliani tried more than a decade ago, after getting kicked off the Duke golf team.
In 2008, Giuliani sued Duke and its golf coach, O.D. Vincent, claiming that Vincent’s predecessor, the late Rod Myers, had verbally promised him a spot on the Blue Devils and “life-time access” to Duke golf facilities. The U.S. District Court in North Carolina dismissed the suit with prejudice, but the lawsuit, which Deadspin read through, got “wrongfully kicked off golf team” in headlines, so, job done.
In dismissing the case, Judge William Osteen outlined what should have been obvious all along, that a coach recruiting an athlete does not guarantee the athlete a spot on the team for four years. There wasn’t even an argument about a scholarship being revoked, since Giuliani didn’t have one. In fact, he was suing to get tuition money back, even though he wound up graduating from the school.
“Rather than manifesting an intent to be bound, Coach Myers’ statements to Mr. Giuliani describe the potential benefits available if Mr. Giuliani enrolled at Duke, earned a spot on the golf team, and maintained that spot on the team,” Osteen wrote. “The statements are, at best, ambiguous as to the circumstances under which Mr. Giuliani would acquire any rights. … Even contractual athletic scholarships do not ensure a student’s right to play a sport but only constitute a promise by the university to provide the student with financial assistance in exchange for the student’s maintenance of athletic eligibility.”
Giuliani doesn’t have access to Duke’s golf facilities for life now. But he assuredly does have the opportunity to play at Mar-A-Lago or at Bedminster, which brings up the other reason for the gubernatorial run: his dad and his longtime golf pal could be facing some serious criminal charges in the state of New York, and it would be really nice for them if they had someone in Albany who could make that all go away.
If only there were a way to make Giuliani go away.