Giuliani Highlights NYC Record

Wednesday November 21, 2007 6:01 PM

TITLE: ``Challenges.''

LENGTH: 30 seconds.

AIRING: New Hampshire.

SCRIPT: Announcer: ``The world's 17th largest economy. Swimming in red ink. Record crime. Runaway taxes. A million on welfare. That was New York. Until Rudy. He cut taxes $9 billion. Welfare 60 percent. Crime in half. The most successful conservative turnaround in 50 years. In America's most liberal city, Rudy delivered. And he can do it again, in a place called Washington, D.C.'' Giuliani: ``I'm Rudy Giuliani, and I approved this message.''

KEY IMAGES: Scenes of bustling traffic give way to a neon peepshow sign, someone sniffing cocaine and one of the city's notorious ``squeegee men'' - people who intimidated motorists by washing windshields unsolicited and demanding payment - and a 1990 Time Magazine cover about ``the rotting of the Big Apple.'' Then, sparkling images of the nighttime city skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

ANALYSIS: In his third television spot, Giuliani continues to emphasize New York's resurgence while he was mayor, for which he was known before his profile was elevated by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On taxes, independent analysts say Giuliani's tax cuts were actually lower, about $5.8 billion, rather than the $9 billion he claims. The independent analysis was done by the city's Citizens Budget Commission. The discrepancy is because the commission credits state lawmakers, not Giuliani, with an income tax reduction. Giuliani aides say that's silly and that he lobbied hard for the cut.

During Giuliani's two terms as mayor, the city cut taxes by 7 percent or 8 percent, according to the commission and the city's Independent Budget Office. Giuliani reduced income taxes, sales taxes, hotel taxes, commercial rent taxes and co-op and condo taxes, among others.

For managing that in liberal New York, Giuliani gets high marks from the anti-tax group Club for Growth. Yet the group faults him on several fronts, including his resistance to eliminating commercial rent taxes in 1999 in favor of spending the revenues on new baseball stadiums and his opposition in 1996 to a flat tax, which he now says would make sense.

The city was, indeed, operating in the red when Giuliani became mayor. Yet critics note he left the city with a deficit bigger than the $2.3 billion budget gap he inherited.

Welfare rolls under Giuliani shrank by about 52 percent - from more than 1 million to 516,000, according to federal and city figures - as Giuliani helped tie public assistance to work, requiring people to work in community service jobs in exchange for welfare benefits.

Yet New York fell behind a national welfare decline of 62 percent.

And while crime under Giuliani dropped a dramatic 60 percent - aided by a ``zero tolerance'' policy that rid the city of squeegee men - it was no longer at record levels. In fact, crime in New York peaked in 1990 and had been dropping for three years when Giuliani arrived, according to FBI statistics.

``He's trying to make a very straightforward political point, which is, ``I took on the beast,' said Stanley Renshon, a political scientist at City University of New York.

``And the beast is a liberal city out of control. It's got to do with welfare. It's got to do with crime. It's got to do with taxes. It's got to do with quality of life,'' Renshon said. ``He deserves a lot of credit.''

Critics insist Giuliani takes too much credit and exaggerates his record; Renshon said Giuliani should share the credit with others but that most politicians engage in hyperbole.

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Analysis by Associated Press Writer Libby Quaid.

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