Rudy's Mid-Life Crisis

By ERIC POOLEY

Deep inside Rudy Giuliani's Week from Hell--with his marriage wrecked and his Senate campaign close to it--the New York City mayor reached back and threw a few inside fastballs, just to prove he still could. "Oh, get outta here," he told a pack of reporters asking him about various women not his wife. "Get lost!...Don't you guys have the slightest bit of decency? Don't you realize you embarrass yourselves doing this?"

It was reassuring, in an odd way, to see Rudy's trademark snarl. For the past few weeks--ever since he announced that he is battling treatable prostate cancer--the mayor has been weirdly reasonable. He has mused about the meaning of life. He has patiently explained that he doesn't know whether he can fight cancer and run for the Senate against Hillary Clinton. Even after the New York Post ran pictures of him leaving a restaurant with Judith Nathan, a pharmaceuticals executive who in the past year has often been seen at his side, Giuliani remained calm. He called Nathan "a very good friend." The nature of that friendship became clearer a few days later, when a gray, shaken Giuliani announced that he and his wife Donna Hanover would be separating.

That piece of news came as a gut-wrenching surprise to Hanover, a TV journalist who immediately went before the cameras to return fire. Blinking back tears and speaking in an icy voice, Hanover aimed for the heart. She said their marriage had been damaged in the 1990s by Giuliani's relationship with a city hall staff member. Giuliani and the woman in question, former communications director Cristyne Lategano, have persistently denied their long-rumored affair, but Hanover--breaking years of silence--reignited the story, adding that she had tried to patch things up after Lategano left city hall but Rudy "chose another path." Only then did the old, fierce Rudy spring back into action, using his brush-back pitches to shut down legitimate questions about Lategano. When the press aide left city hall a year ago--forced out, it was said, at Hanover's insistence--the mayor helped her land a $150,000-a-year taxpayer-subsidized job with the New York convention and visitors bureau, a job for which she was deemed "simply unqualified" by the weekly Crain's New York Business. This was just the sort of cronyism for which Giuliani loves to flail other politicians. Now that he was being accused of it, he had no choice but to bring out the snarl: "Get outta here! Get lost!"

Of course, everyone is waiting to see whether Giuliani will be the one who gets lost--whether his health and marital problems will drive him from a race he never seemed keen on making in the first place. By Thursday, all the rumors had him quitting. "Everyone is hearing the same thing," says an adviser to Governor George Pataki. "He's going, and he's going fast." Giuliani maintains that he hasn't made up his mind, and those who know him well caution that he is stubborn and mercurial enough to confound all expectations. "If the entire Republican leadership held a press conference and said, 'Rudy, you must go,' he'd be sure to stay in," says someone who has known him for 30 years. A city hall source told TIME the mayor was ready to quit last Friday--but decided not to after Hanover made an issue of Lategano. "He didn't want to give Donna the satisfaction of driving him out," the source says. The mayor's campaign says no decision has been made.

Everyone expected Giuliani-Clinton to be a long, strange race. It might end up being a short, strange one. Nobody expected the tough-guy mayor to be fielding questions about his mid-life crisis or confessing that he has cried; no one imagined that the contest that grew from Hillary's marital woes might be called on account of Rudy's. But whatever Giuliani decides--and his announcement could come this week--it won't be the alleged extramarital liaisons that hurt him. It will be the way he has handled them. New York is not prudish; for the past two years, the press has actually shown some restraint in reporting on Giuliani's private life. Hanover chose not to appear at his side when he won re-election in 1997, and she didn't show up at a city hall event for two years, but no one belabored the obvious. Giuliani stopped wearing his wedding ring; he brought Nathan to the Times Square millennium bash on Dec. 31 and the St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, but the press reported nothing about her. So the mayor has no right to complain about the "salacious" media. He brought the trouble on himself, mostly by his treatment of Hanover. Simply put, what kind of man would hold a press conference to announce the end of his marriage without first coordinating it with his wife?

Giuliani allies say the mayor tried months ago to get his wife to agree to a separation, but she would not discuss the subject. Still, his announcement, which surprised even his staff, brought to mind the many times this control freak has lost control in front of the cameras. In March, after an unarmed black man named Patrick Dorismond was shot to death by New York police, Giuliani smeared Dorismond by releasing his sealed juvenile-arrest records. When he blindsided his wife last week, it was just Rudy being Rudy. He said he was being "honest, direct and decent," but others thought he was being a heel. Giuliani strategists are clinging to the idea that marital discord can't hurt you in a race against a Clinton. But Rudy is running against the wronged woman, not the philandering man. And the pain in Hanover's eyes is not likely to be forgotten by some of the suburban women who until now supported Giuliani over Clinton.

"You know, I don't really care about politics right now," Giuliani said last week, and no one could blame him for that. But with its nominating convention just two weeks away, the state G.O.P. cares a great deal about politics. Republican leaders from Pataki on down were publicly supporting Giuliani while privately worrying about who would replace him. Some Republicans dream that Pataki might get into the race--the popular Governor would be the favorite against Hillary--but he has shut down such talk. That makes the odds-on favorite Representative Rick Lazio, the tousle-haired Long Islander who wanted to challenge Giuliani for the nomination until Pataki made him back off. If Giuliani steps aside, says the Pataki adviser, "it's gonna be Rick. All the other names are bulls___." Those names include Peter King, the voluble Congressman who last week was busy working up interest in his candidacy; and Ted Forstmann, a millionaire financier known for his $50 million voucher program to send poor children to private schools. Forstmann's appeal lies in the fact that he could pay his own way, but G.O.P. strategists insist money won't be a problem. "If you or I ran against Hillary Clinton, we'd raise $20 million in no time," says Kieran Mahoney, a consultant close to the G.O.P. leadership.

On Friday, Giuliani said he had fallen behind on his consultations with doctors, raising the possibility that he would cancel a California fund-raising trip. And press reports had the mayor arranging a secret meeting with Lazio--another ominous sign for Giuliani supporters. These days in New York, the Rudy Watch never stops.