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American Morning

America's New War: Giuliani's Election Options

Aired September 26, 2001 - 10:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In the face of this tragedy life goes on, and New Yorkers actually went to polls yesterday to vote in the mayoral primaries.

On the Republican side, it appears that businessman Michael Bloomberg scored a solid victory against his rival. Democrats Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer ran almost even in their party's primary, sending the race to a runoff next month.

Many New Yorkers say, if they could, they would vote for incumbent Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but Giuliani can't run again because of term limits. That could all change though.

And joining us right now to talk about the political picture in Washington is CNN's senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us this morning, Bill.

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: You're like just about everybody else around here, working 24 hours a day.

SCHNEIDER: Yes, we are.

ZAHN: Bill, I know that the speculation is very hot here in New York City that the pressure -- the mayor will continue to put some sort of pressure on individual counsel members to try to get them to create some legislation that would -- or the state legislature, to create something that would change the term-limit laws. Is that the expectation there, or do you think he just won't do that?

SCHNEIDER: Well, nobody is really sure. The mayor said he's mulling of the possibility of becoming an active candidate, which would require somebody to suspend the law, either the state legislator and the governor or the city counsel.

But we did ask people yesterday in our exit poll what they would do in November if Giuliani were to become an active candidate. And what we found was that 39 percent of Democrats and twice as many, 78 percent, of his fellow Republicans said they would vote for Giuliani if he were a candidate in November.

Now, that kind of support would make him a formidable contender, because he got elected in 1993 with just 33 percent of the Democratic vote.

But very few New Yorkers took the trouble to write his name in yesterday. He asked them not to. He said he wasn't a not candidate. And it would be very difficult to mount a write-in campaign in November. It's hard. You have to be a contortionist to write in names on the New York City ballot.

but the alternative is to figure out some way of getting his name in the ballot. That can't be done unless the legislature or the city council acts, and they don't seem inclined to do that right now.

ZAHN: Well, a lot of them seem adamantly opposed to this. I mean, they tried this twice before and it didn't fly, so -- unless -- you know -- and I think the former mayor of New York City was on the show a couple of days ago describing the amount of animosity that exist between the mayor and several members of the council. So he just didn't think it was in the political equation.

SCHNEIDER: He's made a lot of enemies. And of course, aside from that, the voters reaffirmed the term limits law twice when it came to a vote. And in fact, a recent poll says they still want the term limits laws to be in place even though they overwhelmingly approve of the way Rudy Giuliani has handled his job. So it doesn't look that's likely to change, although, there is some forces in New York which may look at the prospect of someone like mark Green becoming mayor and say, hold it, we can't do that, and they might try to mount a last-ditch effort, but it would be very, very tough.

ZAHN: You made a good point, though, Bill, where you made it clear that the mayor had asked people not to write his name in yesterday during the primary election. I wonder what difference it would have made if he hadn't said that, because, obviously, he didn't get money write-in votes yesterday.

SCHNEIDER: He got very few write-in votes. But, again, we found that a lot of people said they wanted -- they would vote for him if he were an active candidate. The question is: Would they figure out how to do it on a write-in?

Well, there is a scenario which says, if the mayor says in November, I want to run, I want to serve another term, and that he -- let's say he can't manage to get his name on the ballot, then you would have to have a huge organized campaign, my guess is led by tabloid newspapers in New York, which are very conservative in their politics and like Giuliani, to try to educate voters how to do it. It isn't easy. Would it work? Questionable, but that's one way it could go. It would have to be a massive organizational effort, though.

ZAHN: It is interesting, though, Bill, how conflicted some New Yorkers remain about all this. I had a stale bail -- stale bagel this morning with some New York police officers and they were talking about strength of their union and how their union didn't back the mayor the last time because he didn't support a major increase in their salary. And they say as much as they respect the job he has done during this horrific tragedy, that they are on the fence on this one. SCHNEIDER: Well, that's right. In fact, you know, what we found in our -- in looking at the exit poll is that terrorism didn't really change what happened in New York politics all that much, it wasn't even the top issue. At least among Democrats, education was the number one issue, followed by the economy, which, of course, was much worsened in New York City by the attack, and only third came the issue of terrorism itself.

You know, they say, Paula, that everything has changed since the September 11th attacks, but even in New York City, which was ground zero, politics didn't really change all that much. The campaign, of course, was suspended, and not a lot of voters have been paying attention to politics.

ZAHN: Got that right, one of the worst turnouts ever. What, about nine percent yesterday? Nothing to be terribly proud of.

Bill Schneider, thanks so much for that update.

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