In the end, his advisers said, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's decision to do what once might have seemed unthinkable came down to a simple calculation: that whatever damage he might do to his standing as a Republican, on balance his political, governmental and personal self-interests would best be served by having Mario M. Cuomo as Governor, and so he should do all he could to assure it.
Mr. Giuliani's bold stroke put him squarely in the mold of the Mayor he most admires: Fiorello H. La Guardia, the Republican eclectic who captivated and cultivated his city for three terms through Depression and war on the strength of bipartisan elan and alliances, yet was ultimately frustrated in his hopes for a bigger spot on the national stage.
This Mayor long ago accepted the inherent risks of his stance by criticizing his fellow Republican, George E. Pataki, so often while praising Mr. Cuomo so openly, and he had resolved by Columbus Day to pull the lever for Mr. Cuomo in the privacy of the voting booth, aides said. The only remaining question was whether to stay publicly, and coyly, neutral. In a marathon session with top aides on Sunday night, he finally ruled that out.
In between, alternative speeches were drafted, political risks were weighed, polls were produced by the Cuomo campaign to persuade Mr. Giuliani that he might make a difference in a close race, and turkey sandwiches and strong coffee were consumed in Gracie Mansion. Mr. Giuliani held the decision so closely that even Mr. Cuomo was not told until their mutual supporter, Raymond B. Harding, the state Liberal Party leader, telephoned the Governor with a heads-up just as the Mayor went on television to announce it yesterday afternoon.
But long before yesterday there were clues. The Mayor had said such warm things about Mr. Cuomo's support for his fiscally strapped city, and such critical things about the harm Mr. Pataki's promised tax cuts could wreak in reduced aid, that an endorsement of the Republican candidate for governor would have been a big stretch -- dismissed as mere partisanship by voters, and too little, too late by Mr. Pataki and his patron, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, already the Mayor's sworn foe.
"The worst thing for him would be to endorse Pataki," said David Garth, Mr. Cuomo's political strategist, and then have Mr. Pataki be elected but not do well by the city, "or to have remained neutral, which is totally foreign to his personality."
"There's no doubt that those were the choices," said Mr. Garth, who also guided Mr. Giuliani to the mayoralty but insists that he did not lean on the Mayor. "It took an awful lot of guts to do what he did."
That seems true enough. If Mr. Cuomo wins, Mr. Giuliani will have established himself as a powerful, independent party of one, to whom even the state's top Democrat would be heavily beholden, but perhaps at the expense of the Republican Party credentials he would presumably need if he sought higher office. Might he be forced, like Mayor John V. Lindsay before him, to face a Republican primary just to hold onto his seat, then become a Democrat?
Far from it, his advisers say. In fact, Mr. Giuliani believes that his own election as a fusion candidate in a city that remains overwhelmingly Democratic, Ross Perot's strong showing in the 1992 Presidential race, and this year's sudden third-party gubernatorial candidacy of B. Thomas Golisano, an upstate businessman, all foretell a new era of post-partisan politics in which his own best future might lie, in the city or beyond.
"I think I know some Republicans that are going to vote for Mario Cuomo this year, except they feel, because they're so tied into partisan politics, they can't tell you the truth about it," Mr. Giuliani said in announcing his decision. "It's kind of circumlocutous, but I think that's one of the reasons why people are so turned off about politics today. Because we don't act like we're real people."
Some real Republicans begged to differ. Fran Werner, the head of the Republican Party in Queens, said bluntly, "I can't see the Republican Party supporting him in the future -- for anything." Mr. D'Amato's assessment was more veiled: "This is not a contest between me and Giuliani -- that may come some day."
Yet if Mr. Giuliani's decision reflected political courage, it was far from foolhardy. To make his speech on the endorsement, he postponed a planned one on how to fill a gap of $1.1 billion in the city budget, and his advisers said he long ago realized that however little Mr. Cuomo might ultimately help him, Mr. Pataki, whose political base lies upstate, would do far less.
Still, the Mayor's decision was slow and painful, and, his advisers insisted with even more emphasis than is customary in such cases, it was strictly his own.
"This was a painstaking decision, and the decision was made, and the direction of it was initiated, by Rudy Giuliani, and not by anybody else and not by any adviser-type," said one of his closest adviser-types.
About two weeks ago, Mr. Giuliani asked Ronald Maiorana, an old friend and former press secretary to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, to draft a speech outlining his concerns and the city's needs from the next Governor. In this speech, several advisers said, the Mayor would have asked New Yorkers to judge for themselves which candidate could best meet the criteria he laid out.
But by 4 P.M. on Sunday, Mr. Giuliani had written out new remarks of his own, envisioning an endorsement of Mr. Cuomo, and gave them to Mr. Maiorana to polish, more or less asking, one adviser recalled: "What if I go this way? This is what's on my mind."
By 6 P.M., top advisers including Deputy Mayor Peter J. Powers and Mr. Harding -- but not Mr. Garth -- had gathered in the Mayor's private quarters at Gracie Mansion for an exhaustive talk that lasted until after midnight, with a break from 8 to 10 P.M. so Mr. Giuliani could join a discussion of budget-cutting options in the small museum room in the basement of the mansion's ballroom.
"It was an assessment of various options and risks entailed, and the consequences to the city," one adviser said.
By the end, Mr. Giuliani had decided, as he himself put it last night: "No. 1, that I would support him, but No. 2 that I would publicly state it because I felt that that was the appropriate thing to do as the Mayor. I think the people of the city and the region are entitled to know whom I'm voting for and why in such an important race."
And the essence of that judgment, the Mayor's aides said, was that his own efforts to succeed as Mayor, to reshape city government and to satisfy the voters that elected him hungry for change last year, would not be helped by Mr. Pataki, the former Mayor of the Hudson Valley community of Peekskill who would owe almost nothing to New York City.
"I think he's well aware that there were high risks involved for him personally from a political point of view," Mr. Garth said. "I think he just felt that there were stronger risks for the people that elected him if Mario did not win."
