- so he retooled his image. he was no longer the u.s. attorney. he was a guy named rudy who came from brooklyn. - he was humble and drank diet coke and ate pizza. - i also had to learn to release more of myself. - yeah. - i was a pretty private person. even though i was a u.s. attorney, only a certain segment of your life is covered. you have to learn how to show some emotion and release it to people. - be real. - and let them know how much you care. - it worked, and it softened his image. he s a family man. - donna hanover was rudolph giuliani s second wife. - we met when i was associate attorney general and she was anchoring the news in miami. - donna had a major role in that campaign. - the message tonight is a lot of thinking women have decided to vote for giuliani. and we want other concerned women to think about it too. - she was very, very media savvy in her own right. - this is the kind of man i want to be the father of my children. and rudy is such a great dad. i wish all
and so that would include peter powers. - peter was one of the few people who could take rudy aside and say, no, that s a bad idea. you ought to do this. he got rudy focused. and he got him away from the distractions that often occurred. - so part of that godfather mindset was loyalty. rudy enormously valued loyalty to him. and so getting rid of people was pretty natural. - we were getting extraordinarily positive press. but this is a mayor who, for reelection purposes, as well as whatever his post new york mayoral goals might have been, it was incredibly important to him that he get the credit for it. and that s where we began to butt heads. - after a while, bratton was getting too much credit. [dramatic music] - our budget kept getting strangled.
- we would bring police captains to meetings every week to hold them accountable for crime going up, going down. - for the record on that 73 precinct case, the crime scene was never notified. we ll hope that that gets corrected. - new york city has logged its biggest drop in violent crime, in nearly 1/4 century. overall, crime rates have dropped almost 16%. - it worked. it brought the murder rate down to 600, which was quite a decrease from 2000. - under mayor rudy giuliani, new york, once the crime capital, is now the safest large city in america, according to the fbi. even the most cynical new yorkers credit giuliani with vastly improving their quality of life. - this is a remarkable moment of transformation for the city. these are the years of the yankees and derek jeter. these are the first years of chelsea. these are the first years of brooklyn happening. so the art scene begins to expand in these ways. this is the new york of sex and the city. - there was a sense among new york
- new yorkers have voted to unseat their city s first black mayor and replace him with a white republican. [crowd chanting] rudy, rudy, rudy, rudy! - yes, ladies and gentlemen, the mayor elect for the city of new york, rudolph william giuliani! - i m standing before you as the next mayor of new york city. [cheers and applause] - rudy loved being mayor. it was the perfect job for him. he loved running things and managing things. - mayor of new york, they say, is the second hardest job in american politics. the new york city press corps? i mean, that is, like, a glaring spotlight the way it is when you sit in the oval office and you have the entire national and international press corps. i mean, it s only second to that. - he came in, and there was a huge budget deficit,
being able to take care of your health and make sure that you re in good health. - he didn t want to be a senator. he wanted to be mayor and president of the united states. - i think that it gave him the excuse he finally needed not to do it. - i think he said something to the effect of, you know, i hope this is happening for a reason, but sometimes we don t know the reasons. - i also believe that, you know, things happen in life for reasons that sometimes you only figure out afterwards. - and, of course, for many people, it seemed that being mayor during 9/11 was the reason. that was his finest hour. and he was the right man at the right time. [applause] - to those who say that our city will never be the same, i say you are right. it will be better. [cheers and applause]