Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani III KBE (born May 28, 1944) served as the Mayor of New York City from January 1, 1994 through December 31, 2001. He is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Giuliani Partners LLC, which he founded in January 2002.

Mayoralty

Campaign and Election

The principal issues of the election of 1993 were crime and taxes. Giuliani also campaigned on the out of control growth of the city's budget and the lack of managerial competence of David Dinkins who was seeking reelection. City Council President Andrew Stein was also critical of Dinkins for increasing the number of city workers assigned to ticketing citizens for parking violations and store owners for litter in front of their stores. But Stein as a Democrat had alienated too many Democratic leaders and dropped out from the primary. Giuliani focused on the quality of life in the city:

Related Topics:
1993 - Andrew Stein

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:It's the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers.

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:It's the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting for at a light.

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:It's the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets.

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Giuliani's message made an emotional connection to a breakdown of the social and political order that Dinkins was unwilling to address: the city had lost 330,000 jobs and had record rates of crime.

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President Bill Clinton's campaign appearance on behalf of Dinkins may have backfired by accusing much of the electorate of the city of racism:

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:it's not record people are against, it's his race, just as in 1989 when he should have won easily. The real question is why were they against Dinkins in '89?

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Giuliani won the election by a margin of 82,000 votes in 1,889,000 votes cast. 53,000 votes were cast for third party candidates.

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Crime control

In his first term as mayor, Giuliani pursued an aggressive and very public policing policy known as Broken Windows in conjunction with Bill Bratton, whom he'd appointed as NYPD Commissioner in 1994, to monitor the small crime in hopes of preventing a bigger one. The policy, while controversial, was perhaps more successful than other similar cities (see neighboring Newark's crime rate in the figure). Rhetorically, the effect was excellent and New York became a model to other cities throughout the United States.

Related Topics:
Broken Windows - Bill Bratton - NYPD

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At the same time these aggressive tactics, described by former Mayor Dinkins as assuming that the ends justify the means, required vastly more arrests of innocent citizens when criminal descriptions were vague. Many argue that the NYPD's new policies curtailed the civil liberties of innocent citizens, particularly minorities. (The City was sued over two dozen times on First Amendment issues and lost each case.) Even the Deputy Mayor, Rudy Washington, was subjected to harassment by NYPD.

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In addition to decreasing the rate of street crime, Giuliani went after enterprises linked to organized crime, such as the Fulton Fish Market and the Javits Center on the West Side.

Related Topics:
Fulton Fish Market - Javits Center

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Urban reconstruction

Giuliani pursued similarly aggressive real estate policies. The Times Square redevelopment project saw Times Square transformed from a run-down center for businesses ranging from tourist attractions and peep shows to a high-price district filled with family-oriented stores and theaters, including the MTV studios and a massive Disney store and theater. Throughout his term, Giuliani pursued the construction of new sports stadiums in Manhattan, a goal in which he did not succeed, though new minor league baseball stadiums opened in Brooklyn, for the Brooklyn Cyclones, and in Staten Island, for the Staten Island Yankees.

Related Topics:
Times Square - Peep show - MTV - Disney - Brooklyn Cyclones - Staten Island - Staten Island Yankees

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Media management

Giuliani, after being elected, started a weekly call-in program on WABC radio. He avoided one-on-one interviews with the press, preferring to only speak to them at press conferences or on the steps of City Hall. Giuliani made frequent visits to The Late Show with David Letterman television show, sometimes appearing as a guest and sometimes participating in comedy segments. In one highly publicized appearance that took place shortly after his election, Giuliani filled a pothole in the street outside the Ed Sullivan theater.

Related Topics:
WABC - The Late Show with David Letterman - Ed Sullivan

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After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Giuliani was widely hailed for his leadership in the aftermath. For this, he was named TIME magazine's Person of the Year for 2001 and was given an honorary knighthood by Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on February 13, 2002, entitling him to add the post-nominal KBE after his name.

Related Topics:
September 11, 2001 attacks - World Trade Center - TIME - Person of the Year - 2001 - Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom - February 13 - 2002

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In April 1999 Giuliani formed an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate, seeking the Republican nomination to fill the seat vacated by the retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His expected Democratic opponent was Hillary Rodham Clinton who later won the election. On May 19 2000 before the primary, he withdrew because of prostate cancer and the fallout from his relationship with Judith Nathan.

Related Topics:
1999 - U.S. Senate - Daniel Patrick Moynihan - Hillary Rodham Clinton - 2000 - Primary - Prostate cancer

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Opposition to Brooklyn Museum art exhibit

In 1999 Giuliani threatened to cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum, shut it down and replace its current board with one of his own choosing if the museum did not remove a number of works in an exhibit entitled ?Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection.? One work in particular, The Holy Virgin Mary by Turner Prize winning Catholic artist Chris Ofili, was targeted as being offensive to some in the Christian community in New York. This painting depicted a black Mary composed with collaged cut-outs of female genitalia from pornography magazines around her. Like many others by this artist, the montage also made use of elephant dung.http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/turnerpeoplespoll/story/0,13945,1073363,00.html Ofili, while refusing to defend his work, commented that "The people who are attacking this painting are attacking their own interpretation, not mine," and that "This is all about control"http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/nyt/ofili.htm.

Related Topics:
1999 - Brooklyn Museum - Turner Prize - Chris Ofili

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In its defense, the museum filed a lawsuit, charging Giuliani with violating the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. This action by the mayor was condemned by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, objecting to the mayor's interference with the first amendment rights of the museum and censorship. Religious groups such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights supported the mayor's actions http://www.catholicleague.org/99press_releases/pr0399.htm http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=8716&c=83

Related Topics:
American Civil Liberties Union - Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

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At that time, it was widely expected that Giuliani and Hillary Clinton would compete for the open seat in the Senate in 2000. She said the mayor's action was the "wrong response," and added "I share the feeling that I know many New Yorkers have that there are parts of this exhibition that would be deeply offensive. I would not go see the exhibitionhttp://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/oct1999/nyc-o01.shtml."

Related Topics:
Hillary Clinton - 2000

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The museum's suit was successful, the mayor was ordered to resume funding and the judge declared that There is no federal constitutional issue more grave than the effort by government officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution as punishment for failing to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxyhttp://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/110299brooklyn-museum.html.

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Role during attack on New York

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the death of nearly 3,000 people in the aircraft, offices, and on the ground, Giuliani was widely praised for his strong leadership and close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts.

Related Topics:
September 11, 2001 attacks - World Trade Center

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He coordinated the response of the different city departments and communicated to the state and federal authorities the support that the city would need for World Trade Center site, for city-wide anti-terrorist measures, and restoration of the destroyed infrastructure. He made frequent appearances on radio and television to communicate to the public critical information with authority: for example, that the tunnels were being closed as a precaution, and that there was no reason to believe that part of the attack included the dispersion of a chemical or biological weapon into the air. He balanced the need to make hundreds of decisions directly and immediately, to delegate hundreds of others, and to visit the injured and console the families of the dead.

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Giuliani in his public statements mirrored the emotions of New Yorkers at the time: shock, saddness, anger, resolution to rebuild, and the desire for justice to be done to those reponsible. "Tomorrow New York is going to be here," he said. "And we're going to rebuild, and we're going to be stronger than we were before...I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can't stop us."

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In 2001, TIME magazine named him Person of the Year http://www.time.com/time/poy2001/poyprofile.html. Prior to 9/11 the public image of Giuliani had been one of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11 and cancer his public image changed to be the man who could be counted on to be able to pull a city together in the middle of its greatest crisis. At the same time however, voices were being raised against the refrain that it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil-rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of the three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/reverend.htm.

Related Topics:
''TIME'' - Person of the Year - Al Sharpton - Fernando Ferrer

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The 9/11 attack occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. It was moved to Tuesday September 25. During this two week period Giuliani sought from the legislature and the candidates an unprecedented three month emergency extension of his term expiring on January 1 2002 to April 1. He threatened that if candidates did not give their consent he would challenge the law imposing terms limits on elected New York City officials and run for a another full four year term http://www.cnsnews.com/Politics/archive/200110/POL20011001c.html.

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The advocates for the extension argued that Giuliani would be needed to manage the initial requests for funds in Albany and Washington, speed up recovery, and slow down the exodus of jobs from lower Manhattan to outside New York City. The opponents saw the extension a means for Giuliani to profit politically from a continued high profile in the recovery efforts. However, Ferrer did not accept the extension because he said it was delaying the scheduled change in city government. Though a provision for emergency extensions is in the New York State Constitution (Article 3 Section 25) http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?co=5, leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary and the election and inaguration proceeded as scheduled.

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