A story out today from Bloomberg draws a link between Rudy Giuliani’s law firm and Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo Chavez. It says that Bracewell & Giuliani does lobbying for Citgo Petroleum Corp., part of a state-owned oil company controlled by Chavez.
Any story putting "Giuliani" in the same sentence with "Chavez" – a man best known for calling President George W. Bush a "devil" and a "madman" – doesn’t exactly help, even if Giuliani spokespeople say he doesn’t do lobbying, for that oil company or anyone else.
But it’s a perfect example of how Rudy the businessman’s far-flung corporate ties could make life difficult for Rudy the presidential candidate.
Take, for instance, the work Giuliani and his security company once did for another fiery leftist leader south of the border: then-Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- a man whose critics have compared him to Chavez and fretted that he would take Mexico the way of Venezuela, if he had won the presidency last year.
Obrador, who rejects that comparison, announced a deal in 2002 to bring Giuliani in to solve Mexico City’s spiraling crime problem. The $4.3 million deal, paid by private investors, was designed to put New York-style tactics to work cleaning up the streets of the Mexican capital.
The idea – dubbed Plan Giuliani – was widely heralded at the time but media reports suggest the results were mixed at best, falling short of goals for cutting crime and souring some Mexican officials on Giuliani’s tactics, though Giuliani officials considered the project successful. It’s also not clear Giuliani was paid the full fee.
The report of the Chavez tie came just as Bush was wrapping up a Latin America swing - one where Chavez organized an anti-American rally - and as Bush was sitting down with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who beat Obrador for the presidency last year.
Craig Gordon