Hours before he was injured in a serious car accident on Saturday night, Rudolph W. Giuliani was cheering on the local baseball team.
He was not watching his beloved New York Yankees play at Yankee Stadium. He was in the stands at Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester, N.H., to watch the home team, the Fisher Cats, take on the Erie SeaWolves.
Taylor Fisher, the general manager of the Fisher Cats (no relation), said he passed Mr. Giuliani, who was walking with a security guard and a woman as they made their way to seats. He instantly recognized Mr. Giuliani but did not say hello. “I let him enjoy the game,” Mr. Fisher said. (His team lost, 7-2.)
To New Yorkers, this might seem a surprising place for Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and lawyer for President Trump, to spend the Labor Day holiday. But he has been a regular in New Hampshire for years, friends and acquaintances say.
“He will gather with a group of friends and enjoy a laugh and a fine cigar,” said Scott Spradling, a former news reporter for WMUR-TV, the local ABC affiliate. “This is a place he comes to see friends and perhaps escape the headlines.”
Mr. Giuliani seems to be loosening his ties to New York. Last month, he sold his apartment on the Upper East Side for $4,975,000, according to Gary Rosen, the lawyer who represented him in the deal.
Mr. Giuliani, 81, spent considerable time in New Hampshire when he was a presidential candidate, campaigning before the 2008 New Hampshire Republican primary.
“Rudy would stay at a hotel overlooking Fisher Cats stadium when he was in Manchester,” said David Tille, who served as Mr. Giuliani’s political director in New Hampshire. “He loved the atmosphere of a ballpark even when there wasn’t a game going on.”
Mr. Giuliani has several friends and political alliances in the state. He has spent time in the town of New Castle on New Hampshire’s Seacoast, Mr. Tille said, with Wayne Semprini, the New Hampshire chair of Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign. He has dined with Frank Guinta, a former U.S. congressman and the one-time mayor of Manchester. (Mr. Semprini and Mr. Guinta declined to comment.)
Well known as a cigar lover, Mr. Giuliani has visited Castro’s Back Room, a cigar lounge with locations in Manchester, Nashua and Concord. In Manchester, he has relaxed in one of the vintage barber chairs, across the room from the bar and the marble shoeshine station, according to Eric Kilbane, the owner of Castro’s.
“Arturo Fuentes, that is usually what he buys,” Mr. Kilbane said of Mr. Giuliani’s preferred brand, at $18 a pop in “tax-free New Hampshire.” Mr. Kilbane noted that this is much cheaper than in New York, which has a 75 percent tax on cigars.
Mr. Giuliani has also dined several times at Fratello’s in Manchester, an Italian restaurant, according to C.C. Howarth, a manager.
The first time she saw him, he was seated in a booth and promptly extended his legs on the cushion, putting his feet up. “I know there are mixed emotions about him,” Ms. Howarth said, “but I think he did a good job in New York when all is said and done.”
After the Sept. 11 attack on New York in 2001, Mr. Giuliani became a beloved figure in the city, and a national hero. But he lost much of his gravitas in his hometown when he became a key adviser to and a tireless defender of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Giuliani is no longer allowed to practice law in New York following his indictment in cases related to the 2020 presidential election. In January, he reached a settlement after being ordered to pay $148 million to two Georgia election workers he defamed.
In New Hampshire, Mr. Giuliani’s most frequent companion seems to be Maria Ryan, a former hospital administrator and nurse practitioner in New Hampshire. He attended the minor-league Fisher Cats game with her on Saturday, according to a video from WMUR.
After the game, Mr. Giuliani’s car was rear-ended on a highway in Manchester. He was hospitalized and treated for a fractured vertebra and released on Monday afternoon.
On the social media platform X, Mr. Giuliani thanked Ms. Ryan for overseeing his medical care.
Ms. Ryan’s involvement in Mr. Giuliani’s affairs has created some headaches for the former mayor. In 2021, he admitted that she had sent an email to the Trump campaign after its loss in 2020 to Joe Biden, asking that Mr. Giuliani receive $20,000 per day for work that she said Mr. Giuliani had done on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
She also wrote President Trump a letter, asking him to bestow upon Mr. Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the final days of his first term, according to the 2022 book “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” by Andrew Kirtzman. The book reported that the letter was intercepted by Bernard B. Kerik, who was at the time working as an adviser to Mr. Giuliani.
Ms. Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.
But Mr. Trump announced on Monday that he may finally grant Ms. Ryan’s wish. On Truth Social, he called Mr. Giuliani “the greatest Mayor in the history of New York City” and said he planned to give him the medal.
Katherine Rosman covers newsmakers, power players and individuals making an imprint on New York City.
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