One of New York’s best-known Republicans is calling on pres idential hopeful Rick Perry to choose Rudy Giuliani as his running mate for next year’s election.
Former state GOP Chairman William Powers, a longtime Giuliani friend and a key player in his first mayoral election in 1993, told The Post that such a move by Perry could deliver key swing states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio to the Republicans.
“He’d be the best No. 2 anybody in the world could pick,” said Powers, who has a longstanding relationship with leading Texas Republicans like Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s top political adviser.
“A Perry-Giuliani ticket would absolutely defeat the Obama-Biden ticket and would have a big impact in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Rhode Island and Connecticut, all places where Rudy is absolutely admired,” Powers said.
“Even in heavily Democratic New York, people should realize he could have a big impact for the ticket upstate and in the outer boroughs, which elected Rudy two times.”
Powers predicted Giuliani would welcome the opportunity to be Perry’s running mate, even though the former mayor strikes many as being unsuited for the role of second-in-command.
“I think he would do it for the right person. I believe he would for Perry,” Powers said.
“He had hoped to be the first Italian-American president. He could be the first Italian-American vice president.”
Perry, calling him “a proven leader,” endorsed Giuliani’s ill-fated presidential bid in October 2007, and the two remain friendly, GOP insiders said.
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Powers is expected to be far more active in state and national GOP politics in coming months, a move likely to cheer New York Republicans who have watched their party’s unrelenting decline in recent years.
Current state GOP Chairman Ed Cox is widely reviled by party loyalists who use such terms as “disastrous,” “pathetic” and “incompetent” to describe him.
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Meanwhile, the long-rumored ouster of state Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs, supposedly at the behest of Gov. Cuomo, is not going to happen, Democratic sources have told The Post.
Jacobs, who is also Nassau County Democratic chairman, was widely expected to be replaced next month by Charlie King, the party’s executive director who was the governor’s running mate for lieutenant governor in Cuomo’s first attempt to win the state’s highest office in 2002.