The old song was “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” but when it comes to votes the heart of Rudy Giuliani’s daughter now belongs to Barack Obama, according to Slate:
There’s one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can’t count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter’s. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani’s Facebook profile, she’s supporting Barack Obama.
On her profile, she designates her political views as “liberal” and—until this morning—proclaimed her membership in the Facebook group “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack).” According to her profile, she withdrew from the Obama group at 6 a.m. Monday, after Slate sent her an inquiry about it.
In what may be an effort to avoid public connection to her famous father, the future Harvard freshman and recent graduate of Trinity School in Manhattan uses a slight variation of her name on the Facebook site. But she didn’t lock her profile, allowing any Facebook user with access to the Harvard or Trinity School networks (more than 42,000 people) to view her detailed profile. (As a Harvard student, I was able to see it.)
This will likely be a mini-tempest in a mini-teapot. It will indeed be used by Giuliani’s foes (“SEE? Even his own daughter doesn’t want him!”)
But problems between Presidents and candidates and immediate family members aren’t really new. There have been many over the years. And the problem for Mr. G. will be the way it’ll be reported in the press, with news about her now-removed Facebook item coupled with “boilerplate” recaps of the former mayor’s unhappy marriages. The New York Times:
As word of her supposed Democratic allegiances ricocheted across the Internet after the online magazine Slate broke the news, visitors to her profile found that she had already moved to alter history. She quit the Obama fan club at 6:01 a.m. and, after Slate posted their article, she took down her entire page.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Giuliani, Joannie Danielides, said: “Before the presidential campaign got under way, Caroline added herself to a list on Facebook as an expression of interest in certain principles. It was not intended as an indication of support in a presidential campaign, and she has removed it.â€
Mr. Giuliani, whose strained relationship with his children has been widely reported, alluded to his daughter’s differing political outlook during a campaign stop in Iowa, noting, apparently with regret, that his children “don’t work on my campaign.â€
“My daughter, my daughter I love very much, I have great respect for her and I’m really proud of her,†he said. “I don’t comment on children because I want to give them the maximum degree of privacy.â€
Mr. Obama, who was campaigning in Le Mars, Iowa, was asked what he thought about the support from such an unexpected corner.
“That’s very nice,†he replied. “We think it’s wonderful that we are attracting support from young people all across the country. I can’t wait to meet her.â€
And you can see, looking through press coverage, how it won’t help Giuliani (but it’s unlikely to lose him votes from people who like him). The Village Voice starts its piece this way:
It’s been no secret that Rudy Giuliani has had a strained relationship with Andrew and Caroline Giuliani, his two children from his marriage to Donna Hanover. Earlier this year, Andrew, who hopes to be a pro-golfer, told the New York Times “I’m not going to have time to, even if I wanted to, be in the campaign.â€
But things got much worse today when Slate magazine revealed that Caroline Giuliani was supporting Barack Obama.
CBS News starts out with this:
It’s no secret that Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been on the best of terms with his son and daughter. It now appears that those differences may be political as well as personal.
And after recapping the mini-flap, includes this:
The New York Daily News reported that Giuliani attended his daughter’s graduation in May — sitting in the last row, and leaving without speaking to her.
“It’s not the first time children of a presidential candidate have been estranged personally or politically from their parent,” said CBSNews.com Senior Political Editor Vaughn Ververs. “Rudy Giuliani’s bitter, and very public, divorce from Donna Hanover — mother of Caroline and Andrew — has left some very visible scars which won’t make social conservatives within the Republican Party any more comfortable with his candidacy, but is unlikely to be a decisive issue.”
Meanwhile, are members of Giuliani’s family now choosing sides?
Andrew Giuliani, the 21-year-old son of GOP presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, weighed in Monday evening on reports that his sister Caroline, 17, was a member of a Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., fan club on Facebook.com.
“I love my sister very much and I respect her opinions,” Andrew Giuliani told ABC News. “One of the great things about our parents is they’ve always encouraged us to see the world for ourselves.”
(He sounds as if he has a future as a diplomat…)
If the kind words about his father are surprising after news in March that the former New York Mayor was estranged from his children — following a very public divorce from their mother, Donna Hanover — aspiring golf pro and Duke University junior Andrew says they shouldn’t be.
He says he’s spoken to his father since media reports about tensions between the two of them and says that relations were never all that bad.
“That story was overdone,” he says. “It was nowhere near as bad as the story made it sound.”
Andrew, who splits his time between New York City and North Carolina, says his dad would be a “great president. He’s my father. He’s my blood. Whatever differences we might go through — that any family might go through — I still support him and want him to be the best he can be. Just as I want my sister to be the best she can be, and just as I want my mother to be the best she can be.”
In reality, RG’s daughter is probably a bit dismayed and shaken by now. Little did she ever dream that her Facebook list would be used for investigative journalism, for a GOTCHA! moment that will likely be seized on by Guiliani’s critics.
He earlier stated preference for Obama likely won’t get Obama any votes, lose Giuliani any votes but it’ll likely mean that she’ll be careful from now on about anything that’s “out there” that can be seized on by the mainstream or internet press as evidence of a major revelation.
Yet one more person who’ll feel burned by the press — this time the Internet press — as a Facebook item became a redface book item…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.