When Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani bolted his own party and endorsed Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, he knew something the public did not: that Mr. Cuomo's campaign polls had begun to show him moving ahead of State Senator George E. Pataki.
The public polls still had Mr. Cuomo behind and would not show him moving ahead until days after Mr. Giuliani's endorsement. Some analysts attributed that movement to Mr. Giuliani's strong support for the Governor, and that could have been the reason, or one of the reasons. Still, it was no surprise to the Cuomo camp or to the Mayor: The Cuomo campaign conducted tracking polls every night, was making them available to Mr. Giuliani, and they were optimistic. On Saturday afternoon, two days before the Mayor's endorsement on Oct. 24, Mr. Giuliani, Deputy Mayor Peter Powers, David Garth and a Garth associate, Richard Bryers, met in Mr. Garth's office and examined the polls. They placed Mr. Cuomo four to five percentage points ahead.
That was just past the margin of error and included a sizable undecided vote of about 16 percent, so it hardly predicted a Cuomo landslide. Moreover, Mr. Powers says, he was skeptical because in his experience, campaign tracking polls tend to be kinder to their candidate.
"I always discount them (campaign polls) by four or five points and that's what I told the Mayor," said Mr. Powers. "This was going to be a tough road for Mario." But not impossible? "I never thought anything was impossible. But Rudy felt strongly that he had to make a statement about what is best for the city of New York. He always felt he was Mayor first. If the polls fit into that fine. If not, so be it."
It wasn't until about three hours before he made his announcement on Oct. 24 that Mr. Giuliani resolved to go ahead and support the Democratic Governor. "I remember, we were sitting alone in an office," said Mr. Powers, who went to Bishop Laughlin High School with the Mayor. "Rudy said, 'What do you think?' And I looked up and spoke to him in Latin, which we both studied. I said 'Alea Jacta Est,' which is what Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon. "
