By Craig Gordon
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — He didn’t say a word about abortion, gay rights or gun control. And no one in the crowd of about 250 firefighters and rescue workers who were invited to hear Rudolph Giuliani asked.
Giuliani’s visit to the North Spartanburg fire station yesterday wasn’t about trying to win over conservative voters on those sticky social issues. It was about Giuliani and 9/11 and first responders and little else, from the 20-foot-high American flag backdrop, to the old-timey fire truck behind the stage, to his honorary designation as “Chief Giuliani” by the state firefighters’ association.
This was Giuliani’s most direct pitch yet trying to use his actions on 9/11 to win over a critical constituency here - people who probably disagree with him on many of those issues but still remember watching him in admiration on that morning and still think of him as a friend to first responders.
He worked hard not to disappoint. Rescue workers in New York that day didn’t just save lives, Giuliani told them, “I believe they saved America.”
He also compared them to others who wear the uniform, Marines and soldiers, and said their role protecting America in the fight against terrorism was no less important than those in the military.
But as Giuliani pushes 9/11 ever more front-and-center in his campaign with events like these, there are voices back in New York that are challenging the story of Rudy-as-hero that day, with some saying he failed in the years leading up to 9/11 to prepare the city for that awful day, and others questioning why he echoed federal officials in the weeks after the attack as saying the air was safe.
Sally Regenhard believes Giuliani did nothing when he took office after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 to fix problems that later plagued the city’s effort on 9/11-faulty fire radios and communications breakdowns between police and fire officials.
“He had eight years to certainly plan for something like this to happen again, and they had a total failure, they had a lack of attention to this issue,” said Regenhard, who blames the death of her firefighter son, Christian, on faulty radios.
She has threatened to “swift boat” Giuliani on his performance on 9/11 - referring to the publicity onslaught against presidential candidate John Kerry’s service in Vietnam - and says she is working with other families to put out the story but has no specific plans yet.
Other 9/11 families have expressed support for Giuliani, who has defended the city’s response after the disaster and even said he doesn’t fault family members for getting angry - but wishes they would direct that anger where it belongs, at the terrorists.
Giuliani told the 9/11 commission that the city had tried new digital radios it tested in early 2001 but they were too complicated and had to be withdrawn before the attacks.
“Anybody can Monday-morning quarterback,” said Jason Merchant, assistant chief of the nearby Croft Fire Department, but he believes there was little that could have been done differently to save the firefighters.