When marital woes spill onto campaign stage

Almost half of New York's voters are Roman Catholic, however, and half of that number are Italian-American. Giuliani, a defender of traditional beliefs, has a strong appeal to many of those voters. "With some people he will lose some votes," says Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac College Poll. "There will be some people who don't approve of this kind of stuff."

What may make it more difficult for Giuliani are the allegations of his wife, actress Donna Hanover, that their marital problems started when the mayor had an affair with a top aide. She says she tried to save the marriage, but Giuliani chose a separate path. Today, the mayor openly admits he has a different close female friend, whom he has taken to official functions.

"I believe an extramarital affair that is private and kept private does not have any major impact," says former Mayor Edward Koch. "But Catholics refer to it as scandalous when you flaunt it, and Rudy is flaunting it."

Mr. Koch says the separation may ultimately cost Giuliani 3 to 4 percent of the vote. "It would be enough to defeat him," says Koch, who predicts: "His next announcement will be his withdrawal."

For his part, Giuliani says he'll make a decision soon. "I'm not thinking about politics.... Politics comes at least second, maybe third, maybe fourth, somewhere else," he said Wednesday.

One of Giuliani's main concerns is his health. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer recently and is in the process of deciding on the type of treatment.

For decades, public leaders' private lives were off-limits: From Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy, the press knew a lot about marital infidelities, but seldom wrote about them.

All that changed, however, in the late 1980s, when Democratic presidential candidate Mr. Hart essentially dared the press to prove that he was cheating on his wife. The media took up the challenge, easily documenting Hart's infidelity - and bringing down his campaign. The momentum continued into Clinton's campaign, when CNN went live with Gennifer Flowers's tale of an affair - thereby forcing other news organizations to take the story seriously. "Clearly, there was a decision on the part of the pack that everything was open," says Mr. Gitlin, "that politicians were not entitled to private lives because morality is public. That consensus ruled through 1998 and early 1999 and almost brought down the president. Except that it turned out not to be the prevailing opinion of the country."

The public's apathy about politicians' conduct perplexes some. "Why is this society so deep in the sewer?" asks Mr. Sabato, who says Giuliani's announcement brought back the revulsion he felt over the Lewinsky matter. "It almost made my blood boil," he says. "There ought to be limits to a society that has standards."

But Michael Genovese, director of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, says this will fade as an issue in a week or two, providing there are no ongoing revelations. "This is a pretty common thing. It's pretty minor.

"It's part of the culture nowadays."

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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