Biography: Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor of New York City

Rudolph Giuliani Date of birth: May 28, 1944


Rudolph William Giuliani was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Harold, had run afoul of the law as a young man, and after paying the consequences, worked hard to instill an unwavering respect for the law in his only child. To escape the influences of criminal acquaintances in the old neighborhood, Harold Giuliani moved the family from Brooklyn to the Long Island community of Garden City when his son was seven. Respect for the law and a sense of duty were reinforced by the extended family. Four of Rudolph Giuliani's uncles were policemen, and another was a much-decorated captain in the New York Fire Department.


Giuliani majored in political science and philosophy at Manhattan College, and graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1968. After receiving his law degree, he served as clerk to Federal District Court Judge Lloyd F. McMahon, who encouraged him to join the U.S. Attorney's office. In 1970, Giuliani became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. He was soon named Chief of the Narcotics Unit and promoted to the position of Executive U.S. Attorney. In 1973, at age 29, he was put in charge of the highly publicized police-corruption cases arising from the Knapp Commission report. In 1975, he was appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General. He returned to New York in 1976 and became a partner in the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler.

After practicing law for four years, Rudolph Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the new administration of President Ronald Reagan. As the third-highest-ranking member of the Department of Justice, he oversaw federal law enforcement agencies including the Bureau of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshal Service. In 1983 he was named U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As U.S. Attorney, he earned a national reputation for prosecuting mob bosses, corrupt politicians and Wall Street inside traders with equal zeal. In six years, he obtained 4,152 convictions; he was widely regarded as the most effective prosecutor in the country.

After leaving the Justice Department, his thoughts turned toward the state of his native city and what role he might play in its regeneration. Long troubled by violent street crime, New York City had been further ravaged by the crack cocaine epidemic. The city was considered a case study in urban decay, and was thought by many to be beyond repair. As Giuliani considered running for Mayor, he was often told that, as a Republican, he could never win election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. In 1989 he lost his first race for Mayor by the closest margin in New York City's history. As the city's condition continued to decline, Giuliani resolved to run again. In the election of 1993, the race was also close, but the outcome was reversed. Rudolph Giuliani was elected the 107th Mayor of New York City, the first Republican to hold the post in 20 years.


When Giuliani took office, more than a million New Yorkers were on welfare -- every seventh resident of the city. The new administration initiated the country's largest "workfare" program, and over the next eight years, 691,000 people moved from the welfare rolls to work and self-sufficiency.

The new Mayor adopted the controversial "Broken Windows" theory of crime prevention, in which the smaller signs of disorder -- such as graffiti and vandalism -- are suppressed, to alter the perception that a neighborhood is out of control. Computer mapping enabled the New York Police Department to identify precise locations with the highest incidence of violent crime and direct their resources accordingly. In only two years, serious crime had been reduced by more than one-third and murder by almost half.

Many attributed the drop in crime to the improved national economy and declining national crime rates, but crime in New York continued to decline during an economic downturn, even while it rose in the rest of the country. While a few cases of police misconduct or excessive force received intense publicity, actual police shootings declined by 40 percent during Giuliani's administration, and long overdue reforms reduced violence in the city jails by 95 percent. Over Giuliani's eight years in office, New York's crime rate fell by 57 percent, and the FBI rated New York as America's safest large city.

Drawing on his past accomplishments as a prosecutor, Giuliani also moved to eradicate the influence of organized crime from the city's commercial life. Hundreds of millions of dollars that had been routinely siphoned from the city's economy by racketeers were returned to the legitimate sector. Income and property values rose throughout the city, and whole neighborhoods were redeveloped. With the improvement of the city's economy, Giuliani was able to cut taxes while turning a $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus. After his first two closely-fought campaigns, Rudolph Giuliani was easily re-elected to a second term in 1997, carrying four of the city's five boroughs.


From the beginning of his administration, Mayor Giuliani made a high priority of emergency preparedness, taking to heart the lessons of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in the year before he took office. He created an Office of Emergency Management to coordinate the efforts of the Police and Fire Departments, and ran drills for a variety of possible disasters, including plane crashes, bombings and attacks with Sarin gas or anthrax.

Barred by term limits from serving a third time as mayor, Giuliani was expected to run for the United States Senate, but in the Spring of 2000 his marriage was ending in a highly public divorce, and he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, the same disease that had killed his father. He withdrew from the Senate race and underwent months of radiation treatment. He recovered completely, and is now free of cancer, but in the autumn of 2000 it was assumed that Rudolph Giuliani's role in the life of the City was coming to an end. The primary election to choose his possible successors was scheduled for September 11, 2001.

That morning, on hearing that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, and that a large fire had broken out, the Mayor rushed to the scene, arriving just after another plane hit the second tower. He saw fellow New Yorkers jump to their deaths from the flaming towers and saw old friends from the Fire Department as they charged into the burning buildings, never to be seen again.

The Mayor took charge of the emergency efforts from a nearby building, but when the second tower collapsed, the building was engulfed in a wave of dust, ash and debris. The Mayor, his staff, members of the press and other occupants of the crumbling building were trapped. After finding the basement exit blocked, Giuliani led his crew through the storm of ash and smoke to a firehouse several blocks away, where a detective pried the door open and the group found momentary safety.


Giuliani established a new command post at the Police Academy, where he remained for the next three days. The Mayor of New York took to the airwaves immediately, reassuring a shaken nation and giving honest, straightforward information about the ongoing rescue effort. Although nearly 3,000 people died in the attack, as many as 20,000 civilians were rescued from the collapsing buildings. While some advisors urged the Mayor to keep the city's public places closed, Giuliani insisted that the New York's signature institutions -- Broadway theaters, the Stock Exchange and major league baseball -- re-open within days of the attack.

In the days and months following the terrorist attacks, the Mayor's commanding leadership earned him the admiration and respect of the international community and especially of the grief-stricken residents of New York City. In all, 23 police and 343 fire fighters lost their lives on September 11, and the Mayor made a point of attending as many of their funerals and memorial services as possible -- over 200 in the months that followed. Rudolph Giuliani left office at midnight, as 2001 turned to 2002. His last official act as Mayor was to set the giant ball rolling in Times Square to signal the start of the new year. Today, he is the President of Giuliani Partners, a New York-based consulting firm specializing in security, preparedness, and crisis-management. In the years to come, Rudolph Giuliani may seek public office again, but whatever the future brings, he will always be remembered as the greatest mayor in the long history of New York City.