TERROR AS A TOOL Radar's Giuliani bumper sticker

GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is hoping to ride his 9/11 experience straight into the White House. But while "America's Mayor" is playing well in New Hampshire, New Yorkers directly impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy are less convinced.

In a recent New York Daily News poll, New Yorkers said they favor current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn't declared his candidacy, over "America's Mayor" by almost 2 to 1.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of money management firm Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658 of his employees on 9/11 and whose brother died in the attack, has given Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign $4,600 of his own money over the last two months and has not given the Giuliani campaign a dime. Diny Ajamian, who as Cantor's human resources director worked with families of deceased employees and helped rebuild the company's staff, says she's disgusted by Giuliani's use of 9/11 as a political prop, adding that while Giuliani made plenty of public overtures to Cantor families in the immediate aftermath, he was virtually invisible two weeks later when she went to work for the firm. "It's absolutely disgraceful. He's just a sleazebag," Ajamian says. "I think now the families feel like he left them high and dry."

A rep for a group that aids families of those injured or killed in the WTC seconds that. "Rudy thinks our grief and the hurt we experienced somehow makes us stupid," says Monica Gabrielle, co-chair of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization which assists families affected by 9/11. "Rudy just can't control himself.... He can't acknowledge his failures.... He just can't stop creating his own myth about himself and about that day. The man is in love with his own legend."

But Giuliani's most potent critics are those who became a symbol of bravery after the 9/11 attacks—America's fire fighters. The 280,000 member International Association of Fire Fighter's fund has been at odds with the former mayor since shortly after 9/11, claiming the man now worth as much as $70 million "gave up" on dead firefighters and devoted Ground Zero cleanup efforts to, of all things, recovering gold and silver. Removal of victims' remains amounted, they say, to a "scoop and dump." Tensions heated up again in March, when a draft of a letter explaining the union's decision to snub Giuliani from their 2008 presidential forum was leaked to the press. The union eventually decided to invite him, but the candidate turned down the half-hearted invitation. That was the last straw for the group's president, Harold Schaitberger, who says Giuliani's actions since 9/11 show "disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen."

Of course, none of this has done much to damage Giuliani's long-term national prospects. He retains a healthy lead on his rivals. And the New York Times has even wryly speculated [sub. req.] about the former mayor trademarking "9/11" itself, the idea being that he could then legally prohibit his rivals from drawing on the event in their own terror talk.

Plus, think of the bumper stickers!