Giuliani, Rudy (1944– )

US Republican politician, mayor of New York City 1994–2001. A former federal prosecutor, he was elected mayor of the traditionally Democrat-dominated New York City, at his second attempt, in 1993. As a result of demographic shifts and his own, non-partisan ‘quality of life’ programme, the crime rate fell dramatically and the economy expanded. In November 1997, he became the first Republican since Florio La Guardia in 1937 to be re-elected. He was widely admired for his calm leadership in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11th 2001.

In 2007–08, he contested the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 presidential election but, after initially leading in national opinion polls, performed badly in the early caucuses and primaries and in January 2008 withdrew from the race and endorsed Republican nominee John McCain.

Born in Brooklyn, Giuliani worked in the US department of justice during the mid-1970s and rose to become a US attorney. During the 1970s he was a Democrat and an Independent, but in the 1980s became a Republican and unsuccessfully contested for the mayorship in 1989. He controversially endorsed the Democrat incumbent, Mario Cuomo, in the 1994 governorship race in New York and campaigned for re-election in 1997 on a joint Republican Party and Liberal Party ticket. In 2000 he announced that he would run for Senate in opposition to Hillary Clinton, but resigned from the race after disclosing that he was suffering from prostate cancer. In October 2001, it was announced that Giuliani would receive an honorary British knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his compassion towards the families of British victims of the 11 September attacks. He was chosen as Time magazine's Person of the Year in December, and won the German Media Prize in February 2002. The following month he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace.