Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly asked conservatives who doubt his dedication to strict constructionist judges to look at the 700+ judges he appointed in New York. Ben Smith at The Politico did just that:

But most of Giuliani's judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito -- much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia.

A Politico review of the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state's lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1. One of his appointments was an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges. Another ruled that the state law banning liquor sales on Sundays was unconstitutional because it was insufficiently secular.

A third, an abortion-rights supporter, later made it to the federal bench in part because New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a liberal Democrat, said he liked her ideology.

Read it all at the link above. As soon as this hit the internet, Bill Simon, Jr. (former Assistant US Attorney under Rudy and California gubernatorial candidate) and other Giuliani spokesmen pointed out that in NYC the Mayor chooses judges from lists of three nominees of a nominating panel, so the question ought to be whether he chose the best available candidate.

Ben Smith lost no time in responding:

And finally, as a matter of practice, the commission is basically controlled by its chairman and its executive director. Under Giuliani, the chairman was Paul Curran, a former Republican U.S. Attorney; its executive director was Paul Siegfried, a Democrat who had served in that position under other mayors and whose focus was qualifications, not ideology or judicial philosophy. Again, Giuliani could have replaced Siegfried, as Bloomberg did. He chose not to.

The bottom line is that Giuliani chose not to turn the courts, as he had other areas of city government, into a battle ground of ideology or reform. He appointed candidates in his own image -- law and order former prosecutors with liberal social views. He allowed the panel's chairman and executive director to do most of the work. He wasn't looking for a revolution in judicial philosophy, and didn't get one.

The strongest case here is simply that Giuliani says he'll appoint Scalia-like judges to the federal appellate courts, which are quite different from the local courts I wrote about. This may well be true. There's just nothing in his record to support it.

The whole response is at the preceding link. It was, in the first, Giuliani who invited inspection of his NYC judicial appointments as evidence of the sort of judges he might appoint. The actual review proves doubly inconvenient, coming as it does while McCain is desperately trying to sabotage his own campaign and probably attempting to sink Romney's on the way down.

This is the first wrench in the works of what has been a smooth, almost seamless, Giuliani campaign. How he deals with it will matter beyond the significance of the issue alone.