NORMAN TEBBIT'S AMERICAN COUSIN

Mayor Giuliani has a way with dogs but,

wonders Philip Delves Broughton, can he

beat Mrs Clinton in the Senate race?

New York WHEN New York's Mayor, Rudolph Giu- liani, decided recently to ban the keeping of ferrets as pets on the grounds that they were vile, ferocious beasts, the city's ferret- owners went ballistic. One of them even dared to confront the Mayor on his weekly radio phone-in. 'This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness,' David from Oceanside was told by Mr Giuliani. `You should consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist about this excessive concern how you are devoting your life to weasels. There are people in this city and in this world that need a little bit of help. Some- thing has gone wrong with you.' Having finished his rant, the Mayor smiled his thin-lipped smile, the kind that keeps chil- dren awake at night.

At parties in Gracie Mansion, his official residence, Mr Giuliani cruises the room like a zombie. Suddenly, you will find his hand gripping your shoulder. He stares with his rictus smile, offers a 'How are you?', and moves on, his arm outstretched to his next victim. His shoulders are hunched, his suits cheap and baggy. He could be Norman Tebbit's American cousin.

As arguably the most effective politician in America over the past decade, however, Mr Giuliani has earned the right to speak and behave as he likes. Questioned last month about one of his fundraisers, who had received a special parking-permit, the Mayor replied, 'Oh my God, he's got a permit to park in the city. Oh my God, that's right, I'm a big crook.'

The first Republican to take over the city in 20 years, Mr Giuliani has turned New York around. Crime has plummeted, welfare rolls have shrunk, the once chronic city budget is now in surplus. Thanks also to a booming Wall Street, New York is glittering as never before.

Millennium Eve was the Mayor's crown- ing moment. Standing above two million people who jammed the streets around Times Square, he led the countdown to midnight. This ghoul-faced man with a comb-over and creepy lisp, once deemed unelectably nasty, is now the city's best cheerleader. Once behind the voting-booth curtain, even the city's liberals have voted for him. After decades in which New York's man- agement was in the grip of vapid gesture politics, pandering to the city's myriad eth- nic groups, Mr Giuliani went back to basics. He made it safe to walk the streets again.

Before he took office in 1993, it had become a given that New York's natural state was anarchy, its bodily expression a palms-up shrug of the shoulders. Into this melee, he brought 'zero tolerance' and, to the horror of the hand-wringers, it worked. Crime dropped by 44 per cent, murder by 61 per cent, and in a few years New York had become the safest big city in America.

But now, as he faces Hillary Clinton in a contest for New York's vacant Senate seat, his temper, his intimidatory methods and his sometimes cruel wit are being ques- tioned. The liberal honchos who have used this Italian bruiser to do their dirty work want him to vanish quietly from the stage and make way for the divine succession. He is the peasant general whose war is won and must now return to the fields. Thankfully, he is not going. Term limits prevent him from running for a third time for mayor, so the Senate is the obvious next step. He has more than earned his shot.

Some have argued that Mr Giuliani and Mrs Clinton are more similar than they are different. Both are bossy lawyers with an overweening self-righteousness. Both are quick-tempered and obsessive. Neither ever forgets a slight. But really it is the contrast between them that makes this the most watched political contest of 2000, the presidential race included. If Mrs Clinton were going up against just another blow- dried suit, it would not be nearly so inter- esting. As it is, the race is the stuff of politi- cal fairytales, with Giuliani the Beast against Hillary's Beauty; the snarling Brooklyn kid against the First Lady's swot- tish, Methodist Golden Girl.

While the First Lady attempts to grasp the issues which matter to her adopted state, Mr Giuliani mainlines into his city's blue- collar passions. Growing up in Brooklyn, the Mayor has said, he was the only fan of the Yankees baseball team in a neighbourhood devoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Every Saturday in summer, the young Rudolph would don his Yankee cap, brave the jeers of his neighbours and board the train to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

You can imagine him as one of those baggy-trousered urchins in pictures of 1920s New York, or in the film Once Upon a Time in America carrying a pile of news- papers under one arm and giving a far-too- grown-up sneer to the camera.

To this day, he calls himself the Yankees' number-one fan, and on rainy days, when the team is playing in an empty stadium, he can be seen in the stands in his anorak rub- bing his hands together for warmth and smiling. Just by moving a few sticks of old furniture into her new suburban house north of New York, Mrs Clinton can never have that kind of connection to the city.

In the final stretch of his mayoralty, Mr Giuliani has been criticised for micro-man- aging the city after running out of big tasks. Dog-owners were chased across Central Park by mounted police for walking their pets without leashes. The Brooklyn Museum had its funds cut off when it put on Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition of modern British art, which the Mayor called 'sick stuff' belonging in a 'psychiatric ward'. But still his poll-ratings climb. He is currently six points ahead of Mrs Clinton, and is particu- larly popular with women voters. Whether he wins or loses the fights he picks — and he seems to pick a new one every day New Yorkers like the fact that he cares.

Just before Christmas, Mrs Clinton said that Mr Giuliani 'always gets angry' about things. Her advisers hope this will become a theme, that Mr Giuliani is just too abra- sive to work in a consensual body such as the Senate. Take his response to a man who phoned in to complain about people who failed to clean up after their dogs: 'I get angry about this all the time. When I was a private citizen, I would go up to peo- ple and tell them they were slobs . . . I would walk up to them and say, "You're a real slob and you're disrespectful of the rights of other people, clean up after your dog, damn it." ' He is as choleric as any New Yorker who has to deal with a lunatic taxi-driver, a power-cut in the stifling heat, a shop which tries to stiff them on a refund, or ferrets in the next-door flat. For that New York will one day name streets and airports after him, long after Mrs Clinton's dalliance with the city is behind her.