Boca Raton, Fla. – Rudy Giuliani “was unprepared to protect New York, and he is unprepared to lead our country.” That’s the message Florida Republican voters are receiving in the mail this week from the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). The IAFF is sending a new direct mail piece to 128,000 Republican women between the ages of 40 and 80, a.k.a. Security Moms.

The direct mail is a part of the IAFF’s “Fire Brigade” protesting former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential candidacy around the state of Florida. The “Fire Brigade,” a group of retired New York City fire fighters and family members of fire fighter victims of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center are exposing Giuliani’s trumped up 9/11 credentials as a myth.

“This is a first for the IAFF,” said IAFF General President Harold A. Schaitberger. “We traditionally support a candidate, not oppose someone. We are taking this unusual step because it is important to our members and it reflects how opposed they are to a potential Giuliani presidency.”

Jim Riches, a newly retired Deputy Chief of the Fire Department of New York, has been leading the IAFF “Fire Brigade.” Riches has trailed the Giuliani campaign over the last week protesting at events in Orlando, Titusville, Sun City Center, Celebration, Coral Springs, and other sites.

He is featured in the direct mail: “My son was a fire fighter who died on 9/11. I resent Rudy Giuliani using this tragedy for his own political gain. He isn’t a hero. He’s a coward who left our city unprepared for a terrorist attack.” – Jim Riches

Images of the direct mail piece can be found at www.iaff.org/08News/Media/Giuliani.pdf.

The only response Giuliani and his campaign surrogates have had to the ‘Fire Brigade’s’ message has been to cry partisan politics, not address the issues. They claim this effort is coming only from the union leadership, not rank-and-file fire fighters, but those on the ground in Florida are fire fighters and their families – not union officials. And they say the IAFF is an arm of the Democratic Party, but the union has a history of supporting Republican candidates as well, giving 30 percent of its political funds in the 2005-2006 election cycle to Republicans.

“Giuliani can not address the real issues that the fire fighters, their family members and others have brought up in relation to his poor decisions leading up to 9/11 and its aftermath,” said Schaitberger. “He simply complains that we are playing politics, but what we are doing is trying to set the record straight.”

To explain Giuliani’s failed leadership, the IAFF created a 13-minute video, which can be viewed at www.rudy-urbanlegend.com, and on YouTube, where with more than 380,000 views it has become one of the most popular video in the news and politics category on the video sharing Web site. The IAFF is funding and assisting the “Fire Brigade” as it crisscrosses Florida.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, headquartered in Washington, DC, represents more than 287,000 full-time professional fire fighters and paramedics who protect 80 percent of the nation’s population. More information is available at www.iaff.org.

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