New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani is the 107th mayor of New York City, elected in 1993 and again in 1997.

Under Giuliani's leadership, overall crime is down 57 percent, murder has been reduced 65 percent, and New York City - once infamous around the world for its dangerous streets - has been recognized by the F.B.I. as the safest large city in America for the past five years.

New York City's law enforcement strategies have become models for other cities around the world, particularly the CompStat program, which won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. CompStat allows police to statistically monitor criminal activity on specific street corners as well as citywide, holding precinct commanders accountable for criminal activity in their neighborhoods.

When Mayor Giuliani took office, one out of every seven New Yorkers was on welfare. Mayor Giuliani implemented the largest and most successful welfare-to-work initiative in the country, cutting welfare rolls in half while moving 640,000 individuals from dependency on the government to the dignity of self-sufficiency. 

In addition, Giuliani has enacted a record of over $2.5 billion in tax reductions - including the commercial rent tax, personal income tax, the hotel occupancy tax, and the sales tax on clothing for purchases up to $110 dollars.  His policies helped the city grow 450,000 new private sector jobs.

Giuliani was not always successful in New York politics.  In 1989, he made his first attempt at the mayoral seat as a candidate of the Republican and Liberal parties.  He lost by the closest margin in city history.

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, fight organized crime, break the web of corruption in government, and prosecute white-collar criminals. Few U.S. attorneys in history can match his record of 4,152 convictions with only 25 reversals.

In 1981, Giuliani was named associate attorney general, the third highest position in the Department of Justice. As associate attorney general, Giuliani supervised all of the U.S. attorney offices' Federal law enforcement agencies, the Bureau of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Marshals.

From 1977 to 1981, Giuliani practiced law at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler in New York.  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.  At age 29, he was named chief of the narcotics unit and rose to serve as executive U.S. attorney after having joined that office in 1970.

Giuliani attended Brooklyn, Manhattan College, and New York University Law School, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1968.  Upon graduation, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd MacMahon, United States district judge for the southern district of New York.

Giuliani was born to a working class family in Brooklyn, New York in 1944.  He has two children.