Giuliani’s State of Mind Goes From N.Y. to National

A quarter-century ago, when New York was known as “Fun City,” Mayor John V. Lindsay resigned from the Republican Party to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

The photogenic mayor, who had gained recognition by keeping the city cool during a time of urban riots, was blown away in the Democratic primaries. It was the last time a New York mayor sought national office.

These days, some of the city’s savviest politicians say that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani--the first Republican to be elected since Lindsay--is building the same kind of identity that could make him a national candidate.

First things first, of course. Giuliani needs to win reelection on Nov. 4. But politicians of both parties agree that his Democratic opponent, Manhattan Borough President Ruth W. Messinger, so far has run such a hapless campaign that speculation about the mayor’s future has started even before balloting begins.

Polls show Giuliani with a lead of 20 points in a city where Democrats have a greater than 4-to-1 edge in registration. He not only is running strongly among his traditional base of white Catholics and Jewish voters, he is also gaining support among Latinos and blacks.

“This is not a race for reelection. It is a race to position himself as a moderate Republican who can win in traditional Democratic strongholds,” said Mitchell Moss, director of New York University’s Taub Urban Research Center. “The 1997 race is Rudy’s audition for national or statewide office.”

“Rudy is already saying things like, ‘New York is a blueprint for the nation.’ The word ‘national’ is showing up more and more in his vocabulary,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “ . . . Rudy will put mayor on his resume and start sending it out.”

Under term limits, Giuliani, 53, only can serve four more years. “The fact is he will be a lame duck as soon as his second term starts,” said a former advisor. “Visibility is very important to him, for it is leverage.”

Still, it is hard to imagine Giuliani as a lame-duck anything. With a strong streak of certitude, he dominates debate in New York, often with the force of a sledgehammer.

“He’s not looking for love,” said Moss.

In city halls across the country, the job of mayor has changed in the wake of federal cutbacks for urban programs.

By necessity, what has emerged is a group of highly practical chief executives who have revived the model of the strong, managerial mayor.

Like Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, Richard M. Daley in Chicago, Edward Rendell in Philadelphia and others, Giuliani--more than most--epitomizes the tough new breed.

During the campaign, Messinger repeatedly has charged that Giuliani is a “bully.” But the label hasn’t stuck with most voters.

“Messinger is so aggressive that she gets no sympathy from people who think that Rudy is tough,” said David Garth, the veteran political consultant who ran Giuliani’s successful 1993 campaign for City Hall. “Ordinarily a woman would pick up some sympathy. She doesn’t.”

Giuliani, a high-profile U.S. attorney, narrowly defeated David N. Dinkins, New York’s first black mayor, in 1993, and immediately established sharp contrasts with his two Democratic predecessors.

There is none of the shtick of former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who strode the streets at the height of his popularity asking everyone in sight: “How am I doing?”

Giuliani knows how he is doing, and does it with the focus and discipline of the prosecutor.

Unlike Dinkins, who ran on a campaign of healing and avoided confrontations, Giuliani seems energized by arguments.

And unlike both prior administrations, Giuliani’s City Hall speaks almost exclusively with one voice--Giuliani’s. The mayor has severely limited media access to city commissioners, and has controlled the flow of municipal information.

An article this month in the Columbia Journalism Review, headlined “Hardball in New York,” complained about the strategy.

“Reporters have found agencies and departments uncooperative if not downright hostile,” wrote Konstantin Richter, an assistant editor of the magazine. “Even getting basic information, interviews or public records has become a strenuous exercise.”

Koch, a persistent Giuliani critic, said “early on, I detected this enormous hubris on his part. Everyone had to understand he was the possessor of the Holy Grail.”

Nevertheless, Koch says he will vote for Giuliani.

Crime has been the centerpiece of Giuliani’s administration, and his campaign.

When the mayor issued a voluminous management report recently, a series of graphs showed historic reductions in crime.

According to FBI statistics, New York is the safest large city in the nation. From July 1, 1996, through June 30, 1997, the graphs showed 44% fewer major felonies and 60% fewer murders.

Law enforcement officials say part of the success rests with the Giuliani administration’s vigorously embracing the “broken windows” theory of policing--aggressively arresting minor offenders before they commit major crimes.

Critics, including Messinger and Koch, point out that crime has gone down across America as the crack cocaine epidemic has eased and as the population has aged. And it was Dinkins, they note, who got the money to add 8,000 police officers to the force.

“If you get people in the privacy of their own homes, all they care about is the sense the city is much safer and he deserves credit for that,” said Koch. “I believe Giuliani deserves much credit--but not all.”

“The crime issue is much bigger than crime itself. It personifies quality-of-life issues, the perception that things are more in control, that the mayor has control and can apply control,” said Garth. “With Rudy Giuliani, whether you like him or not, you feel he is running the ship.”

With crime down, tourism has reached record levels. Times Square, with the help of the Walt Disney Co., has undergone a renaissance. Real estate values in sections of the city have soared. Sex shops have been shut. Reforms at the Fulton Fish Market have decreased the influence of organized crime.

The booming stock market has provided a tax windfall, helping the city end the past fiscal year with a budget surplus of $1.26 billion.

In July, Moody’s Investors Service raised its credit rating for New York’s debt, noting that the city’s fiscal situation has improved “although long-term structural budget imbalance continues to pose challenges.”

Some warn that storm clouds are gathering.

“The mayor has signed a quite expensive, back-loaded labor settlement with municipal unions,” said Raymond D. Horton, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan civic organization that studies the city’s finances. “If and when the market contracts and/or the nation’s economy begins to decline, then the city’s finances are going to be real problematic again.”

The City Project, a nonpartisan research organization, in a rebuttal to the mayor’s management report, cited slower police and fire department response times, growing overtime, reduced health services and fewer housing inspections.

Unemployment in the city remains at 9.5%--double the national average. New York is one of the highest-taxed cities in the nation.

Critics, including Messinger, complain that schools are overcrowded and that the mayor has vigorously resisted efforts to increase the power of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which has the mandate to investigate allegations of police brutality.

Mary Brosnahan, director of the Coalition for the Homeless, contends that the apparent improvement in poverty conditions is illusory.

She likens parts of Manhattan where tourists gather to a giant stage set. By daylight, the homeless who are pressured to leave by police wander off stage into the subways, Central Park or to other sections of the city. With darkness they return, bedding down in the doorways of churches or wherever they can find shelter.

“These people are kept moving all day long,” said Brosnahan. The reality is that “the number of people in the adult shelters is up 20%, and the numbers on the adult feeding lines are growing also,” she said.

Giuliani has provided only sketchy outlines about his plans for a second term. He has proposed $70 million in new tax cuts. With a coalition of unions, he is challenging the constitutionality of the presidential line-item veto in an attempt to restore some federal funding for the city. He has pledged a war on drugs comparable to his campaign against crime.

“New York will lead the United States in reducing drug use as we did with crime,” Giuliani promised.

So far, he has delivered the anti-drug message in speeches at Harvard and at the National Press Club in Washington. He is expected to do more traveling, and increase his visibility by appearing on national talk shows.

During a second term, Giuliani would decide whether to challenge New York’s Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose term is up in 2000. The choice could eventually pit the mayor against Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, if Moynihan decides not to run.

Political strategists say a lesson may be emerging from the polling data.

In a time when party voting is down, a middle-of-the-road Republican who is strong on the drug and crime issues and who appeals to the aspirations of immigrants, can win in traditional Democratic strongholds like New York. That lesson has implications for the GOP nationally.

Clearly, under Giuliani, the city has improved in four years. But perceptions of New York are cyclical and can change quickly.

It was, after all, just a few short years ago that national newsmagazines were predicting New York’s downfall and telling the last person to leave the city to turn off the lights.