2008 Presidential Election Coverage

 GOGO POLITICS

Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III (born May 28, 1944) is a former prosecutor, businessman, and pro-choice Republican politician from the state of New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, Giuliani was a United States Attorney who prosecuted medium/high-profile cases, including cases against organized crime and the tax evader Marc Rich. He served two terms as Mayor of New York City (1994–2001). He was credited by some with initiating improvements in the city's quality of life and with a reduction in crime. Others, however, criticized him as divisive and authoritarian and disputed his role in reducing crime. He gained notoriety for his use of the "perp walk" as a prosecutorial tool. He then gained national attention for his appearances in the media during and after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center that led him to be named Time's 2001 Person of the Year and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. His high media profile in the days following the attacks earned him the nickname "America's Mayor."

Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has founded Giuliani Partners, a security consulting business, acquired Giuliani Capital Advisors (later sold), an investment banking firm, and joined the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm, which changed its name when he became a partner. In February 2007 Giuliani filed a statement of candidacy for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential campaign. Most polls in early 2007 showed him as the leading candidate for the nomination. If elected he will be the first former mayor to be elected President of the United States without serving in a higher office and the second person born in New York City to become President.

Giuliani was born in Brooklyn, New York to working-class parents Harold Angel Giuliani and Helen C. D'Avanzo, both children of Italian immigrants. The family was Roman Catholic and its extended members included police officers, firefighters, and criminals. Harold Giuliani had trouble holding a job and had been convicted of felony assault and robbery and served time in Sing Sing prison; after his release he served as a mafia enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who ran an organized criminal loan sharking and gambling operation out of a restaurant in Brooklyn.

In 1951, when Rudy Giuliani was seven, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South on Long Island. There he attended a local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961. He received College Board scores of 569 verbal and 504 math. He went on to Manhattan College in Riverdale, The Bronx, graduating in 1965. He then attended New York University School of Law in Manhattan, graduating cum laude with a Juris Doctor in 1968.[

Upon graduation, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.

Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War era; he received a student deferment while at Manhattan College and another while at NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified as "1-A", available for military service. He applied for a deferment but was rejected. In 1969, MacMahon wrote a letter to Giuliani's draft board, asking that he be reclassified as 2-A, civilian occupation deferment, because Giuliani, who was a law clerk for MacMahon, was an essential employee. The deferment was granted. In 1970, Giuliani received a high draft lottery number; he was not called up for service although by then he had been reclassified 1-A.

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 of Congressman Bertram 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 in the Reagan Administration, placing him in the third-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.

In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of over 2,000 Haitian asylum-seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were economic migrants. In defense of the government's position, Giuliani stated at one point that political repression under President Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier no longer existed. After meeting personally with Duvalier, Giuliani testifed that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" in Haiti under Duvalier's regime.

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading. He also spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, combat 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. Critics disparaged Giuliani, claiming he arranged public arrests of people, then dropped charges for lack of evidence rather than going to trial.

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