Rudy Giuliani - Biography

Last Editor: msanto15				Rudy Giuliani Biography -   Name : Rudy Giuliani Profession : Mayor of New York City Birth Details : born May 28, 1944

Rudy Giuliani Trivia -

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Rudy Giuliani Detailed Biography -

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 and a name partner in the Houston based law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. He married his second cousin, Regina Peruggi, in 1968. He later divorced her and obtained an annulment from the Catholic Church in 1982. He was married to Donna Hanover from 1984 to 2002. They have two children, Andrew and Caroline. He married Judith Nathan in May 2003. Giuliani is widely regarded as a potential presidential candidate in 2008. His name has consistently been near the top of early polls of potential Republican Party candidates for the 2008 election. Giuliani was born in Brooklyn, New York to Harold Angelo Giuliani and Helen C. D'Avanzo, the children of Italian immigrants. He was raised in Garden City South on Long Island and attended Manhattan College before graduating from New York University School of Law magna cum laude in 1968. Upon graduation, he clerked for Judge Lloyd MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. The annulment of his first marriage to Regina Peruggi was obtained after his divorce on the basis that at the time of the wedding a dispensation was not obtained from the Catholic Church to allow a marriage between second cousins. Rudy Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat, before registering as an Independent. Afterward, he finally decided on being a Republican. In 1970, Giuliani joined the Office of the US Attorney. In 1973, he was named Chief of the Narcotics Unit and rose to serve as executive US Attorney. In 1975, Giuliani was recruited to Washington, D.C., where he was named Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General. His first high-profile prosecution was Congressman Bert Podell who was convicted of corruption. From 1977 to 1981, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm. In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General, the fourth highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised all of the US Attorney Offices' Federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. During this time, he successfully argued on behalf of the U.S. government, in a high-profile case, that there was "no political repression" in Haiti under President Jean-Claude Duvalier, aka "Baby Doc." In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was in that position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, including indictments of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading. Giuliani attracted some criticism for arranging very public arrests of people, then dropping charges for lack of evidence instead of going to trial. He also spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, fight organized crime, break the web of corruption in government, and prosecute white-collar criminals. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions with only 25 reversals. Senator Al D'Amato who had been an long-time ally of Giuliani broke with him because of his prosecution of D'Amato contributor Milken. It was in 1983 that Giuliani prosecuted Marc Rich on charges of tax evasion and illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis. Rich fled the United States for Switzerland to avoid charges and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001. Giuliani first ran as the Republican candidate for mayor in 1989 to succeed Ed Koch. Sponsored by D'Amato, cosmetics heir Ron Lauder first challenged Giuliani in the Republican primary and then in the general election ran on the Conservative Party line. Democrat David Dinkins was elected by a margin of 47,000 votes in 1,900,000 votes cast. 112,000 votes were cast for third party candidates. 1993 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: It's the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers. It's the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting for at a light. It's the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets. 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, faced record rates of crime, and was divided by the 1991 Crown Heights Riot. President Bill Clinton's campaign appearance on behalf of Dinkins may have backfired by accusing much of the electorate of the city of racism: 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? 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. Crime control In his first term as mayor, Giuliani, in conjunction with NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, adopted an aggressive public policing strategy based on James Q. Wilson's Broken Windows theory. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as jaywalking, turnstile jumping, and aggressive "squeegeemen", on the principle that this would send a message that order would be maintained. This policy was followed by a fall in the city's crime rate, and there was much debate over to what extent this was the result of Giuliani's policies and to what extent it could be attributed to external factors. New York's policing became a model to other cities throughout the United States. Despite this success, many liberals criticized the policy as curtailing the civil liberties of innocent citizens, particularly minorities, and the Deputy Mayor, Rudy Washington, complained about harassment by NYPD. Giuliani also directed the NYPD to aggressively go after enterprises linked to organized crime, such as the Fulton Fish Market and the Javits Center on the West Side (Gambino crime family), in the breaking up of mob control of solid waste removal, the city was able to save city businesses over $600 million--an amount larger than any tax decrease in the city's history. 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. 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. 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. Donald Rumsfeld and Rudy Giuliani at the site of the World Trade Center, on November 14 2001. 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. Opposition to Brooklyn Museum art exhibit In 1999 Giuliani threatened to cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum 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-artist Chris Ofili, was targeted as being offensive to some in the Christian community in New York, leading the artist to comment that "This is all about control." In its defense, the museum filed a lawsuit, charging Giuliani with violating the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Religious groups such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights supported the mayor's actions, while it was condemned by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, objecting to the mayor's censorship and interference with the first amendment rights of the museum. The museum's lawsuit was successful; the mayor was ordered to resume funding, and the judge, Federal District Judge Nina Gershon, declared that (t)here 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 orthodoxy. Role during 9-11 attack The defining episode in Giuliani's career was his response as mayor to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. 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. Image Giuliani in his public statements mirrored the emotions of New Yorkers at the time: shock, sadness, anger, resolution to rebuild, and the desire for justice to be done to those responsible. "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." Giuliani was widely praised for his strong leadership and close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts. Effect on 2001 Elections 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 due to the emergency circumstances. 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 another full four year term. . . 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) , leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary and the election and inauguration proceeded as scheduled. Time Person of the Year Rudy Giuliani, 2001 Time Person of the Year. In 2001, TIME magazine named him Person of the Year . TIME wrote that 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 2001 .