‘Leave family alone,’ Giuliani tells questioner

WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose colorful but troubled personal life continues to dog him on the presidential campaign trail, again rebuffed a question about his children, saying, “leave my family alone.”

At a town-hall campaign meeting Thursday in Derry, N.H., Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien introduced her 5-year-old daughter, Abby, to Giuliani, then asked why Republican voters should be loyal to him when his own children aren’t backing him.

“I love my family very, very much and will do anything for them,” Giuliani replied calmly and quietly, the Associated Press reported. “There are complexities in every family in America. The best thing I can say is, kind of, leave my family alone, just like I’ll leave your family alone.”

Giuliani has downplayed the decision by his estranged son, Andrew, a Duke University student, not to campaign for him, and the apparent support of his Harvard-bound daughter, Caroline, for Democrat Barack Obama.

Prudhomme-O’Brien is one of the few voters who have asked him about his children. Usually, reporters ask such questions.

“If a person is running for president, I would assume their children would be behind them,” Prudhomme-O’Brien said later. “If they’re not, you’ve got to wonder.”

Meanwhile, Giuliani started firing back at rival Mitt Romney over immigration.

Romney has been charging that as mayor of New York, Giuliani supported illegal immigrants, giving them sanctuary by barring city workers from reporting them to federal authorities.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a Giuliani backer, accused Romney of hypocrisy on immigration.

In a Washington Times opinion article, King said that as Massachusetts governor, Romney did nothing about his state’s sanctuary cities, hired a lawn-care company that used undocumented workers and deputized state police to arrest illegal immigrants only three weeks before he left office.

Giuliani’s campaign on Thursday also began airing radio ads on his vow to end illegal immigration in South Carolina. The ads are already airing in Iowa and New Hampshire.