Heard it on MSNBC a while ago. Seems he was in the doghouse for endorsing Mario Cuomo for Governor. The GOP even shunned New York for a convention site.
Here's something from a Moonie site, Insight on the News:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n2_v13/ai_20121864Politics naturally plays a role in the selection process. In 1994, for instance, the then-RNC chairman Haley Barbour announced publicly that New York City was "off the list" of convention sites for 1996 after Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo, who lost his reelection bid to Republican George Pataki. "Because of his endorsement of Cuomo, going there would have been a very unpopular thing with Republicans nationally, and my hunch is that the members of the national committee would have voted it down," recalls Mike Grebe, RNC general counsel and chairman of the site-selection committee for the 1996 convention. "This is, after all, a partisan convention."Hmmm... Interesting.