Former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani became the 107th mayor of New York City in 1994 on the Republican ticket. He was the first non-Democrat to become mayor in 24 years.

In January 1994, Rudolph William Giuliani became New York City's first Republican mayor since John Lindsey was elected in 1965. Giuliani's tough-on crime platform perhaps clinched the victory for the former U.S. attorney for the state of New York. In the years after his election, this tough stance paid off; in 1995, Giuliani announced that the murder rate in New York City had dropped by nearly one-fifth, the biggest annual decline in decades. However, he remained a controversial political figure, and on at least one occasion he has committed a widely-criticized breach of diplomacy--when he ejected Yasser Arafat Leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, from a New York concert. But his handling of...