Los Angeles Times Interview : Rudolph Giuliani : Will a Cross-Party Endorsement Result in Years of Repercussions?

Rudolph W. Giuliani is the mayor of New York City and a Republican. Therein lies the tale.

The last such endangered species was John V. Lindsay, a patrician Republican from Yale. Before that was the flamboyant Fiorello H. La Guardia--the kind of Republican Giuliani, 50, wants to be--a GOPer who sails against the wind and can thus govern this overwhelmingly Democratic city.

Indeed, on a Saturday afternoon right before the election, this Republican--married to former TV newscaster Donna Hanover and the father of Andrew, 8, and Caroline, 5--was working the phones in his sumptuous City Hall office on behalf of a Democrat. He was trying to get incumbent Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, whom he had endorsed earlier that week in a stunning move, reelected to a fourth term. Giuliani sincerely believed the New York City-born Cuomo would pursue policies far more favorable to the metropolis than the challenger, a heretofore relatively obscure state senator named George E. Pataki, who was born and raised in upstate New York--a culture with as much sympathy for New York City as, say, San Franciscans have for Los Angeles.

At one point during the conversation in his office, the White House returned Giuliani’s call to find out what else he thought the President should do to help Cuomo. The mayor asked for one more visit to New York by Clinton. But as the results on Nov. 8 showed, nothing could save Cuomo. Not even an electrifying endorsement by one of America’s most interesting new politicians.

But now perhaps one of its most besieged. It may be a long time before New York Republicans forgive Giuliani for his betrayal of the party’s nominee. And long-time political rival Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato is likely to make sure that absolutely no one in his party ever forgets it. But in Democratic New York City, the former federal prosecutor, by appearing to put the interests of the city over that of his party, may just have advanced his dream: to be the new La Guardia.

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Question: We have a Republican mayor in Los Angeles who endorsed the Democrat Dianne Feinstein for reelection, and there’s a Republican mayor in New York City who endorsed Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo. What’s going on?

Answer: Dick Riordan and I analyze things very much the same way, which is, that we realize that we have to put the good of our city ahead of blind party loyalty. If we can, in any way, consistently support our party, consistent with the interests of the city, then we’ll do that, even if you have to give the benefit of the doubt to your party . . . . But when there is a wide discrepancy, as the one that I faced between Mario Cuomo and George Pataki, you have to do what is best for your city. I assume the same thing is true with Dick Riordan.

Q: When you see big cities, you think Democrats, but in two of the biggest, New York and Los Angeles, you see Republican mayors. What are you and Riordan doing that people are responding to?

A: I believe we’re both using what I consider the core principles of the Republican Party, and it energizes people. Trying to deal with the problems of poverty--whether it’s the lack of a home, or a co-op or a condominium--and look to small business as a way in which you can work to meet the needs. The Republican direction we’ve been going in has more freedom to offer.

Q: You think that’s a sellable concept?

A: Yes, I think it works, and the heavier emphasis on law enforcement and individual responsibility is also a corrective to the more kind of environmental or societal approach that had occurred before . . . . The crime bill expressed the new emphasis. But now, of course, (with our success) the Republican Party is feeling the responsibility of having two mayors who run America’s two largest cities. And, over the next year or two, the debate will be: Does the Republican Party work? Does it broaden to embrace this new responsibility? If it does, then the base of the Republican Party can be expanded immeasurably.

Q: On that point, then, you endorsed a Democrat. People like that--you are your own guy. But still, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there. And a lot of unhappiness with both parties, to the point where there’s even a growing interest in a third party.

A: Yes. I see it in the politics of the state today. But I’m probably more comfortable with that than would normally be the case. I was the candidate of two third parties each time I ran for mayor. I was a candidate not only of the Republican Party--but of the Liberal Party, which has been an established third party for years in New York, and also of a new party. That, probably as much as anything else, got me elected mayor. Third-party upsurge says that people are uncomfortable with the usual two parties.

Q: Municipal financing is increasingly difficult. There’s less money to go around. Your job, I guess, is to lower expectations as to what city government can do for you. How do you diminish those expectations?

A: People are all complaining about the cutbacks. So I go to meet them and try to show them the budget, to show them the amount of money that we have, the amount of money that we realistically can take out of the economy, the amount of money we have to work with . . . .

My job is to try to show why we can manage with 10% less, and that that’s needed to help the overall economy and the competitive position of the city.

It may also be in New York that we didn’t have these pressures before. Our economy has changed dramatically. What I often say is that a mayor in the position that I’m in 30 years ago could just have increased taxes and not worried about it. Nobody was gonna leave. They had to be here. Now, people can use faxes, they can use telecommunication. They’re not geographically locked to the city . . .

Q: One thing you have in common with Dick Riordan is that you both came into office on a plank of great concern for crime and doing something about it.

A: Could I just give you an observation about Dick and me. We were on the same Sunday morning TV talk show, and he had been in office about seven or eight months; I had just been elected. By this time, we had spoken on the phone--spoken to each other no more than a half hour. Yet, on the TV show, we gave basically the same answers to almost every question. The point is, we’re facing the same problems, and the pragmatic and rational solutions turn out to be pretty much the same thing. That’s why we end up in the same position.

Q: One problem he faces, more immediately, is the illegal-immigration issue--which, you know, has ballooned in California into Proposition 187--which you opposed. But the reason it’s now a big problem is it’s been allowed to fester for so long.

A: Our cities differ (on this) . . . . and this may be something that both I and (former Mayor) David Dinkins owe to Ed Koch. Ed Koch faced this problem in 1987 with a very rational solution that he put into an executive order . . . .

The executive order essentially says: Focus your attention on the illegal and undocumented aliens who commit crimes . Since there are more of them than the INS and the federal government are willing to handle, anyway, when you start handling that effectively, then we can start to handle the rest of it--which is sort of a Koch pragmatic approach.

So, what the executive order did was, it said that if a person who gets arrested for a crime, or suspected of a crime, is illegal or undocumented, that information is turned over to the INS immediately, and we urge the INS to deport them . . . .

However, if the person is seeking treatment in a hospital for a contagious disease or an injury, if the person is putting their child in a public school or the person is reporting a crime that they’re the victim of, then that person will be protected.

This I spent a lot of time talking to Koch about--because I was the U.S. attorney when he first put this policy into effect. His analysis of it is, I think, flawless. He says, look, even if you can’t see the humanity of this, ask yourself the following question: If you have 100,000 children, conceivably, in a city or a state, who are the children of illegal or undocumented aliens, and the federal government, at least at this point in history, can’t do anything about it--how can the city?

Now, do you want them on the streets? Or do you want them in the school? Of course, you want them in the school.

If a person has just been knifed by someone, and they go into a hospital, do you want the hospital to say, “Because you don’t have a green card, die”? Or do you want a city that says, “We’ll care for you, we consider life important.” . . .

Q: I know you favor small business and entrepreneurship. But one difficulty for you and Dick Riordan down the road is if the cities are worse, people will say they can’t be revived without massive federal help. And you’re not going to get federal help. How can you get out of this box?

A: What I promised people is improvement, not miracles. Even with massive federal help, you wouldn’t have miracles.

Much of what we’re dealing with is beyond the absolute capacity of federal, state or local government to deal with. So what I try to do is to get people focused on slow but steady improvement. Let’s show a city getting cleaner. A city is getting safer--but not perfectly safe. Let’s show a city in which the educational system starts to do better--though it’s not gonna reach perfection.

It is necessary to scale down peoples’ expectation. Because one of the cruel things that we’ve done to people is to raise their expectations of what government can do for them. Government then fails. It could never have done it in the first place. People become alienated from government, angry about themselves. Then they go to the opposite extreme and say government can’t do anything right, which is also wrong . . . .

I have this sort of faith that if you do the little things well, and you show improvement, and people figure out how to do the major sociological improvements themselves--you give them the foundation on which to do it . . . .

Q: How bad or good a job is Bill Clinton doing?

A: I like Bill Clinton. I’ve developed a good relationship with him. I think that he did a very good job on the crime bill. I think his health-care program obviously stalled, hadn’t been thought out as effectively as it could be, wasn’t organized as well. We’ll have to see what happens to it next year. But I think that Republicans make a terrible mistake by trying to figure out how we’re gonna run against Bill Clinton now, as opposed to when you get there . . . .

Maybe this comes out of not having spent a lifetime in partisan politics; you have to root for the President. This is going to be totally counterproductive, even for Republicans. If you don’t work with the President, you don’t root for the President, you don’t try to help him be a success and then if he isn’t, then you have some legitimate positions on which to run against him. But just to run against him for the purpose of running against him--I mean I don’t see it.

You certainly can’t do that if you want to run a city. You’ve got to be willing to work with the President. That’s where you strike a responsive chord. Because what you’re saying is partisanship for partisanship’s sake is not gonna cut it anymore. It adds to peoples’ cynicism and turns people off . . . .

Q: Can you work with the new governor?

A: It’s not a matter of can. Both of us have a responsibility to do it. New York City is the principal contributor of tax dollars to the state of New York. We contribute $3 million-$4 million more than we receive back from state; so the economy of the city is crucial to the success of the state. Both the mayor and the governor have an interest in the economy of the city continuing to do well. After a partisan election, there are always hard feelings to get over. A sign of leadership is the ability to get over them. I supported President Bush, and President Clinton supported my opponent in the last election. Yet, I am capable of working with President Clinton on areas of mutual interest.*