Giuliani says economy, security will decide election

Kirsten Searer

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.

Two things will ultimately help Americans decide this election: the state of economy and their feeling of security, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said this morning at a rally for President Bush.

"On both of those, we need George W. Bush," Giuliani told a crowd at the Green Valley offices of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

The crowd chanted "Rudy! Rudy!" and "2008!" in reference to the next presidential campaign, when Giuliani is rumored to be a potential candidate.

Giuliani pointed out a New York Police Department hat and a New York Yankees hat in the crowd, saying "I'm still recovering" from the Yankees' playoff loss to the Boston Red Sox.

Giuliani spent much of his short speech talking about taxes, saying President Bush understands they need to be low to spur the economy.

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is the first presidential candidate since Walter Mondale to promise to raise taxes, he said.

Kerry has said he would raise taxes for people in the upper income brackets to what they were before President Bush took office and implemented tax cuts.

But Giuliani also talked about national security, saying his faith in Bush was reaffirmed after Sept. 11, 2001.

"We're a lot safer today than we were before Sept. 11," Giuliani said.

Giuliani later told reporters he has a "deep personal commitment" to Bush, which is why he has campaigned hard for him since August.

The Republican Party is not trying to scare undecided voters with talk that Kerry would make the country less safe than Bush would, Giuliani said.

He said he thinks Democrats are actually the ones trying to scare voters by talking about the possibility of a draft, which Bush has said he opposed.

Democrats also have said that Social Security is going to run out, while the president has plans to secure it, Giuliani said. Republicans are simply pointing out that Kerry has changed his position on Iraq and funding the war on terrorism, he said.

"The fear mongering is coming from the Democrats," he said. "What we're putting out, what I'm putting out, is obvious."

Kerry is scheduled to attend a rally today at Jaycee Park, and Giuliani told the crowd to remember that Kerry has changed his position on the war on terror.

And Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., held a conference call Monday to say that Kerry "doesn't know how to to fight this war on terrorism," consistently opposed medical liability reform, and opposed some of President Bush's tax cuts that Ensign said "have brought us out of tough times."

"He's a Northeast, Massachusetts liberal that does not match up to Western, Nevada values," Ensign said.

Ensign said he's not concerned that a recent Las Vegas Sun/Channel 8 Eyewitness News/KNPR Nevada Public Radio poll indicated that Nevada voters put Kerry ahead of Bush on issues of creating jobs, protecting the environment and solving health care problems. Bush leads Kerry on fighting the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.

"It isn't a question of perception," Ensign said. "The facts are that George W. Bush's economic policies have helped the state of Nevada. We are booming. There isn't anybody in our state that doesn't know that our state is booming."