The ex-New York mayor boasted about the “dirty trick” he used to keep non-citizens from voting in his 1993 election
© Getty Images / Spencer Platt
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has bragged about keeping illegal immigrants away from the polling places during his 1993 campaign, explaining the technically-legal but “dirty” voter-suppression trick to fellow Trump backers on Tuesday’s broadcast of his YouTube show America’s Mayor Live.
“They went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘if you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because [Immigration and Naturalization Services] are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic [area],” the Republican lawyer explained.
Illegal immigrants apparently stayed home, not wanting to get picked up by immigration authorities, and Giuliani beat out incumbent David Dinkins by 53,000 votes. “And that’s the way we kept down the Hispanic vote!” he exclaimed. Prompted by Arizona Governor Kari Lake, he clarified he meant “the Hispanic illegal vote.”
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The mayor’s dodgy campaign tactic attracted the attention of then-attorney general Janet Reno, who launched an investigation into Giuliani’s campaign in 1993, claiming it had “violated civil rights.”
“What civil rights did we violate? They don’t have civil rights!” Giuliani exclaimed in the course of relating the story, pointing out, “All we did was prevent people who can’t vote from voting. Maybe we tricked them, but tricking is not a crime.”
The Justice Department at the time issued a statement warning voters the Giuliani campaign’s posters about INS lurking at the polls were bogus. The statement reassured New Yorkers that federal observers were present to “protect the rights of minority voters,” not to check their papers.
Dinkins, who had previously narrowly edged out Giuliani to win by two percentage points in 1989, accused the victorious Republican of waging “an outrageous campaign of voter intimidation and dirty tricks” after conceding, but was unable to prove any wrongdoing.
Approximately 800,000 non-citizen residents of New York City were briefly given the right to vote in local elections last year for the first time, though the state Supreme Court struck down that law in June. Democrats and Republicans continue to battle over voter ID requirements, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul passed a law in June prohibiting local officials from unilaterally adopting voting restrictions.
