The International Association of Firefighters, which has been critical of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's pre-9/11 policies on equipment for first responders and his post-9/11 management of the recovery and reconstruction efforts at Ground Zero, plans to post a 13-minute video that makes its case against the Republican presidential candidate today at a new website: Rudy Giuliani, Urban Legend. The video is due to be posted at 5 p.m. ET.
Giuliani's campaign was out with a "prebuttal" yesterday afternoon, summarizing what it says has been his "record of support for New York's bravest."
NBC News producer Doug Adams reports this morning that he's seen the firefighters' video and that it is "essentially a long attack ad against Giuliani."
He notes that:
A well done attack video posted on the Internet can have a big effect. Late last year, the United Steelworkers union was locked in a bitter dispute with Goodyear over a new contract. The union made a short attack video highlighting what it said were the hazards of buying tires made by replacement workers. The 30-second video spot showed a montage of black-and-white photos of auto accidents. As a sport-utility vehicle flips over and careens through the air, a question appears on-screen: "What tires do you plan to buy?" The video -- posted onto YouTube and other video sites -- generated thousands of hits, and lots of bad press. The result? Goodyear was forced back to the bargaining table.
If a Fortune 200 company like Goodyear can be influenced by bad press from an Internet video, imagine how a presidential campaign will react.
Update at 11:40 a.m. ET:
We've had a chance now to watch a copy of the video. It is, as Adams described, a mix of testimonials from current and retired firefighters, and from relatives of firefighters who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, about what they say was Giuliani's failure as mayor to buy firefighters the radios and other equipment they needed to effectively communicate with each other. They blame faulty radio equipment in particular for the deaths of 121 firefighters in the second tower collapse.
They also are harshly critical of what they say were Giuliani's efforts to accelerate the clean-up at the site -- at the expense of recovering the remains of firefighters and civilians.
The critics are all on-the-record and identified.
Update at 1:30 p.m. ET. The back-and-forth continues:
The Giuliani campaign has put up a webpage about, in its words, the "International Association of Partisan Politics." It notes the union's previous endorsements of Democrats Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore in 2000 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004. And it points to IAFF President Harold Schaitberger's actions on behalf of Democrats.
FIREPAC, the union's political action committee, describes its "endorsement philosophy" here. A chart at that webpage shows that 70% of the PAC's contributions went to Democrats in 2005-2006 -- though the 30% that went to Republicans is the most going to the GOP from any of the unions that the chart shows.
Update at 2:50 p.m. ET. The union responds:
An e-mail press release from the union just arrived -- an apparent response to the Giuliani campaign's "Association of Partisan Politics" release.
Schaitberger is quoted saying:
"Our union endorses candidates on both sides of the political aisle –- always have and always will. Take a look at our FEC reports. Ask Governor Charlie Crist in Florida (a Republican), Governor Jim Douglas in Vermont (a Republican), or (Sen.) Joe Lieberman in Connecticut (now an independent). We fought for them, like we fought for other good candidates. Party labels mean nothing to us. But failure of leadership is a big problem, and Rudy Giuliani failed us in New York and we think he doesn’t deserve to be considered for president of the United States."
The release also points out that "IAFF locals in New York City endorsed Giuliani twice in his runs for mayor" but have since withdrawn their support for him.
