SUITE LIFE FOR RUDY
HITS SWANKY HOTELS ALONG CAMPAIGN TRAIL
By MAGGIE HABERMAN
Click to enlargeApril 23, 2007 -- He's running for president, but some of Rudy Giuliani's campaign-trail hotels have been fit for a king.
Giuliani, whose campaign boasts of having spent the least cash of all the Republican White House candidates, rented rooms at a string of high-end hotels as he stumped around the country over the last three months, his campaign filings show.
They included the swank Fairmont San Francisco, the Arizona Biltmore hotel in Phoenix and the Hotel Andalucia in Santa Barbara, where the campaign paid $2,457 at the end of last month.
Some $4,600 went to the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, a city where the candidate held a fund-raiser last month co-hosted by former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a policy adviser to Giuliani.
Despite light campaign travel in January and February, Giuliani's three-month tab on out-of-town hotels was $48,500.
While Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had posh hotel stays of her own - including the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel - Republican Giuliani's campaign topped the $35,082 her team spent on hotels.
"It's a bad message," said University of Virginia political-science expert Larry Sabato. "Americans expect their candidates to work hard and, yes, grovel a bit running for president. And they want to know that you're sacrificing."
Giuliani's two main GOP rivals spent more than he did overall, and the same was true for their hotel bills. Mitt Romney's campaign shelled out $60,000, and Sen. John McCain's spent $53,500 - and both had ritzy sleepovers.
But those campaigns had bigger operations in place earlier, and had staffers stay primarily in such lower-end lodgings as the Days Inn and Holiday Inn chains.
Giuliani campaign sources said two bills were mislabeled in the election filings - a Conrad Hotel bill for roughly $7,000, and a $1,500 bill at the Marriott West Palm Beach in Florida, where he stayed to attend a roundtable discussion.
The sources said that Giuliani's hotel bills are for himself and staffers, but that costs rose for certain events, such as ones involving members of the campaign-finance team.
Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella noted that the campaign leads its GOP rivals with more than $11 million still in the bank.
California-based Republican consultant Dan Schnur, who worked for McCain in 2000, said Giuliani shouldn't be singled out.
"It could have been worse - he could have been going to John Edwards' barber," said Schnur, referring to the Democratic candidate's two $400 haircuts.
"The fairest way to look at these things is overall spending levels."
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