Rudolph Giuliani

Rudolph Giuliani presents the world - and his own Republican party - with two very different profiles. There is Rudy the hero of 9/11, America's mayor, who marched to Ground Zero while the rubble was falling and gave the country hope in its bleakest hour.

Then there is Rudy the social liberal and figure of fun, who believes in gun control and a woman's right to choose, has been married three times, and lived with a gay couple after his most recent break up, one of whom he affectionately called "mother".

Which of these two Rudy Giulianis sticks in the minds of Republican voters when they are weighing up who to choose to be their candidate for president in 2008 could be a decisive factor in the primaries. It could determine whether he wins their nomination, and if he does, whether the wider electorate then goes on to hand him the keys to the White House.

Born on May 28 1944, Giuliani studied law at New York University and cut his teeth as a lawyer working for the government. In the attorney general's office, he earned a name for himself by launching high profile legal actions against organised crime, including the New York mafia.

Despite his liberal positions on several social issues, he threw his hat in with the Republican party early on. He first stood for mayor of New York in 1989, losing to the Democrat, David Dinkins - who he later challenged to a successful rematch in 1993.

There is no consensus surrounding Giuliani's two terms in the mayoralty. Indeed, there is rarely a consensus surrounding anything done by Giuliani, who has proven to be a divisive figure, inspiring intense loyalty in some, loathing in others.

The headline statistics are undoubtedly impressive. When he entered city hall, New York was in the throes of a wave of violent crime magnified by a crack cocaine epidemic. Over Giuliani's eight years as mayor, the overall crime rate fell by 57% and the murder rate by 65%, which in turn brought a new sense of optimism to the city.

Part of the change was certainly down to his famous policy of "zero tolerance" on crime of any nature. He cracked down on the squeegee merchants who pestered drivers at traffic lights, and he had the temerity in February 1995 to send police into the old Fulton fish market in lower Manhattan to confront the mafia organisers embedded there.

But he also benefited from nationwide and even international trends that saw crack cocaine use subside and a new confidence emerge in inner city areas across the developed world.

His style of management in city hall has also been a matter of dispute. He built up an inner coterie of loyal supporters who admired the way he led from the front. Others, though, lamented his harsh, at times bullying, tactics in which critics could find their funding slashed overnight or access to the mayor suddenly cut off.

He alienated many of the black groups in New York by refusing to work with them. Ed Koch, the mayor before Dinkins, recalls in a recent book on Giuliani by Deborah and Gerald Strober how he would defend Giuliani to black activists who accused him of being racist. "That's not true," he would say, "he's not a racist; he's nasty to everybody."

Towards the end of his second term, Giuliani found himself in real trouble. In April 2000 he announced he was fighting prostate cancer and the following month news of his affair with Judith Nathan (now his third wife) broke. His then wife, Donna Hanover, only discovered he was divorcing her when she heard him say it on television. Soon after he dropped out of the race against Hillary Clinton for one of New York State's two senator positions - a blow to his political fortunes that at that point appeared terminal.

It would take a momentous event to bring him back from that, and September 11 2001 was that event. While President Bush was still awol, circling the sky at the behest of his security personnel, Giuliani was in the thick of the disaster, urging calm and constraint in the face of a calamitous attack on America.

That day turned him into a national hero, and he has been feeding off it ever since. He has made several million dollars on the speaker circuit and built up a solid support base across the country as an inspirational leader and scourge of terrorism.

That record has helped him rise to the top of the national polls and stay there for many months. Yet his figures have in the past few weeks began to slide, accompanied by the rise in fortunes of the social conservative, Mike Huckabee.

Though polls are notoriously unreliable in the primaries, Giuliani's downward movement and Huckabee's steady climb suggest that the former New York mayor has failed to convince social conservatives to back him because of his well-recorded backing for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control laws. He has also recently come under heavy fire from the media as a result of his friendship and patronage of Bernie Kerik, who Giuliani appointed New York police commissioner but who now stands charged with 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy. There have also been questions asked about Giuliani's business interests through his consultancy firm, Giuliani Partners.

Tactically, Giuliani is playing a very unconventional game that he likens to the nine innings of baseball. He has virtually quit the race in Iowa, the first state to go to the polls on January 3, and has recently scaled back his operations in New Hampshire which follows five days later.

But he says if he can win the later innings he will still take the game. He is pinning all his hopes on a late surge in Florida on January 29 and then in several big states such as New York, New Jersey and California that all go to the polls together on the super Tuesday, February 5. He is relying on his superior name recognition as the "hero of 9/11", as well as on his substantial funds having raised $47m that can now be spent on a blitz of TV advertising to give him a greater reach than his opponents when the big states kick in.

Life and times

Born: May 28 1944 in Brooklyn, New York

Family: Married to Judith Nathan, with children, Andrew, Caroline and Whitney

Education: Graduated from Manhattan College in 1965 and earned a law degree from New York University law school in 1968

Career: From 1981 to 1989, Giuliani worked for the office of the US attorney, and made a name prosecuting organised crime and securities fraud. In 1993 he was elected mayor of the city, and held the post until 2002 - through the 9/11 attack. Since leaving office he has worked as a security consultant

Religion: Roman Catholic

Campaign manager: Michael DuHaime, a Republican strategist

Fundraising chief: Roy Bailey

Chief of staff: Tony Carbonetti

Political adviser: Chris Henick

Website: joinrudy2008.com

Business website: giulianipartners.com

MySpace: myspace.com/rudolphwgiuliani