Jimmy Breslin's 10/19/00 Newsday column about Rudy Giuliani and his love life should be mandatory reading for every fan of America's Mayor!

Mayor's Drivers Have No Easy Pass

The dispatchers had a bad time of it Tuesday night in police headquarters. They were handling the special radio band for the Mayor's cars and squad and not doing it all that well.

This had one driver nervous. Some time back, he had been driving the girl friend, Judi, to Gracie Mansion and he pulled into the driveway with Judi the Girlfriend just as the car was pulling out with Donna Hanover, the Mayor's wife.

The two cars nearly hit each other.

Somehow the two women did not see each other, or pretended not to.

But thereafter the driver became known as Wrong Way.

They had five units operating. One took the Mayor to Yankee Stadium. Another took his son to the stadium. The other car was supposed to take his girlfriend Judi to the Stadium where they would place her in a seat belonging to some big corporation. There was a fourth car, driven by Wrong Way and holding another girlfriend of the Mayor's. He had picked her up somewhere in the 30s. She is know as the Other Girl. They had a corporation seat for her, too.

The fifth and last car had the Mayor's wife and was being discussed on the special radio band right now.

If this seems to be a lot of cars and opportunities for confusion, be advised that it is a precise count of the pool of cars and people required to keep these Tobacco Road romances of Giuliani's in motion, all of it on your money, thousands and thousands of dollars for one baseball game.

"Where are you now?" the dispatcher from police headquarters is saying to the car with the Mayor's wife. You could hear it here, in the car taking the girlfriend from the 30s to the game.

"On my way to the Virginia Monologues," the Donna Hanover driver said.

"Oh, the play. The Virginia Monologues."

"Don't make me say it again."

"Say what?"

"Say Virginia Monologues."

"Ten four."

And now in the car taking her to Yankee Stadium, the other girlfriend said, "What are we doing going this way for?" She was in the back seat of a car that was taking what she thought was a strange route to Yankee Stadium.

The driver, Wrong Way, good and nervous, was following a printout map of the route he was to take.

"You're trying to hide me," she said. "I hate when they do that to me."

"That's not happening," one of the security men said.

"It did at the parade."

"Which parade?"

"Just the other day. Columbus Day. When we came up to St. Patrick's, they whisk me away and the next thing I know I'm hiding on the side street while he goes up the steps to shake hands with the Archbishop. Why I couldn't go with him I don't know. I don't care if that Judi was hiding, too. I wanted to be in front.

The Mayor and his people know. The late Cardinal of St. Patrick's, John O'Connor, criticized Geraldine Ferraro Zaccaro by name on the subject of abortion while she was running for vice president. O'Connor then wrote an article about Mario Cuomo in which he used the word excommunication.

So far, however, there have been no remarks or statements from the new Archbishop about the Mayor's behavior.

The Mayor tells the city every day he is the official Keeper of the Morals for the city. And he goes on parade with his girl friend and lets two kids at home see him on television. It's nice. The Irish call it the Mortaler. That is his notion of the quality of life.

Since the new Archbishop, Egan, says nothing, why upset the guy by bringing the woman right up the steps? Let her hide on the side of the building.

All this has made her suspicious. "Wait and see. It'll be the same thing at the first game of the World Series. He's supposed to throw out the first ball. Why can't I do that? What does he care? He's done it before. I want to stand up in the box seat and throw out the first ball. Standing next to him. It's my turn to get known. I want to hear the whole crowd cheer for me."

There was ignorance of history there. The writer who was taking all these notes down from the girl for you once sat in a box at a big Mets final playoff game in 1969 with John Lindsay, the Mayor. He was up for re-election. Somebody handed him a baseball, he stood, the public address system bellowed that the Mayor would throw out the first ball.

The Mayor? A freaking politician! At our sport!

From every seat there came the loudest boos Lindsay ever had heard. How can I win an election if this what they think about me?

Seated in the same box, with a little smile on his face, was Robert Wagner, the former mayor. He said quietly, "Heh heh. You never throw out the first ball at a game. The people hate politicians around their sports. Only the President can throw out the first ball. Never a Mayor."

"Did you tell Lindsay?"

Wagner smiled. Of course not. He was exactly what the crowd thought of politicians, a cheap sneak.

Now, the other night, ostensibly en route to the game at Yankee Stadium, city driver Wrong Way burst into lights, bright white lights, but they were not coming from the top of a grandstand. They were on the ground. The theater district.

"Where are we?" the girlfriend shrieked.

In front of Wrong Way was the city car for Donna Hanover parked in front of her show.

Wrong Way froze. He shook his head. I could lose my job over this, he said to himself.

In the back seat, the girlfriend was ferociously mad. On the special band for the mayor's cars and squad came the demanding voice:

"Wrong Way. The Mayor is asking. What is your location now?"

"At the Virginia Monologues!"