Attacks Mark N.Y. GOP Mayoral Primary : Giuliani and Lauder Trade Blows as Campaign Is Winding Down

Like a spray of expensive perfume, the scent of money envelops New York’s bitterly fought Republican mayoral primary.

Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune and former ambassador to Austria, has spent more than $10 million of his own money in an effort to defeat former U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani next Tuesday. In a primary where only 420,000 Republicans are registered and perhaps only 100,000 may vote, that could work out to $100 per voter.

Giuliani has spent $2.2 million himself and leads Lauder handily in the polls so far. Politicians caution, however, that any primary with a small turnout is a potentially volatile environment, with the candidate best able to marshal his supporters at a distinct advantage.

Heeding that warning, Giuliani, whose campaign has been stumbling, recently stepped up his attacks on his opponent.

“Ronnie does not understand suffering in this city,” the 45-year-old former prosecutor charged last weekend during their only debate. “For Ronnie, suffering is the butler taking the night off.”

Lauder, 45, who is supported by Republican Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato, fought back later with a new tough television commercial. The ad charged that Giuliani had advocated a pardon for a top drug dealer and sought to cover up his $700,000-a-year salary at a law firm representing a Panamanian bank that was investigated for laundering drug money.

“Why are people afraid of Rudy Giuliani? Because they should be,” the commercial concluded.

Giuliani, who already has the Liberal Party’s nomination, needs the support of Republicans if he is to have a chance of gaining City Hall as the so-called fusion candidate of two parties. He has sought to cast his campaign in the mold of New York’s famous fusion mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia--even declaring in the same hall where La Guardia announced in the 1930s.

Throughout the campaign, Lauder, who has the Conservative Party’s backing, sought to portray Giuliani as a “traitor,” who abandoned true Republican principles by accepting the Liberal Party’s nomination.

“You have walked away completely from the Republican Party,” he charged during one particularly acerbic exchange when they met in debate. “You talk about fusion. You talk about yourself as La Guardia. Let me tell you, Rudy. You’re no La Guardia. You’re John Lindsay.”

Lindsay, a former mayor whose name still remains anathema to many conservative Republicans, switched from the GOP to the Democratic Party when he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Previously, he had been elected to a second term as New York’s mayor as a fusion candidate.

Weakness as Candidate

Giuliani has proved to be a weaker than expected candidate. Present polls show the two front-runners in the Democratic primary, Mayor Edward I. Koch and Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins, defeating him in the November election.

In an editorial endorsing Koch in the Democratic primary, the New York Times said that Giuliani’s campaign “so far has dismayed even his supporters. He hasn’t managed his money well. He has done little to correct the impression of merciless zeal. His views on law enforcement are sophisticated but he offers little substance on other issues. It took him weeks to stop wobbling on the subject of abortion.”

In an effort to reverse his fortunes, Giuliani hired Roger Ailes, who served as President Bush’s media adviser during the 1988 presidential campaign. In recent days Giuliani’s campaign appears to have become better organized and more focused and the candidate has taken on a sharper edge.

Giuliani’s commercials have begun to stress the candidate’s boyhood roots in Brooklyn, in a clear appeal to Italian Catholic voters.

In a city where voters regard crime and drugs as their chief concerns, Giuliani’s experience as a prosecutor is being stressed. One commercial promising that “Rudy” can clean up New York ends with a jail door being slammed shut.

In a general election against Koch, Giuliani could be expected to attack the mayor sharply, charging not only corruption in his Administration, but intemperance in his demeanor. “He’s the mayor who has called people dogs and weasels. He’s the mayor who played on racial divisions during the presidential primary last year,” the former prosecutor said recently, previewing the offensive.

But in the general election, Giuliani also would still have to guard his flanks. Lauder still will be on the ballot as the Conservative Party’s candidate no matter what happens in Tuesday’s GOP vote.