Inside a Kingdom of Allegiances

It was Kerik whom Giuliani elevated from his personal driver to New York police commissioner. Then Giuliani made him a partner in his consulting firm. And in 2004 Giuliani recommended Kerik to President Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security -- before Kerik's ties to a company with suspected links to organized crime were revealed in the press. Last week, he was indicted on 16 counts of corruption, mail and tax fraud.

It's the same kind of fidelity that drove Giuliani to employ his high school friend, Monsignor Alan J. Placa, as an analyst at Giuliani Partners, despite allegations that the Catholic priest was involved in the church's sexual abuse scandal. (Placa denied the charges and was never charged with a crime.) Placa's ties go deep: He helped get Giuliani's first marriage annulled, performed the services at the second marriage, to Donna Hanover, and baptized his children.

It's a philosophy of allegiance quite familiar to Italian Americans of Giuliani's generation, deeply rooted in his family upbringing in New York, where immigrants like his own grandparents built tight, insular communities -- both personal and professional -- and stuck close in the face of ethnic discrimination.

"Many of these people around him may be skilled professionals, but they're also fanatically loyal," says Democrat Mark Green, who as New York City public advocate tangled with the Giuliani administration regularly.

"They would throw themselves under a bus if that's what it took. And that's what it took to stay prominent in Rudy's circle."

Extending the Family

Everyone will tell you that Giuliani's comfort is with the old extended family. But he knew he had to bring in and test a few new cousins if he wanted to expand the kingdom.

Over a guys' dinner last year at New York's fanciest private cigar club, the Grand Havana Room, Giuliani first asked Pat Oxford to help him become president.

"We had been playing footsie, but we never had a direct conversation," says Oxford.

The men have been law partners since 2005, when Oxford brought in the former mayor to run the newly created Manhattan office of Bracewell & Patterson, a 400-lawyer Texas powerhouse. The firm, which paid Giuliani and his business a reported $10 million for his name and skills, is now called Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.

But Oxford would bring a lot more than just financial value to Giuliani as he assembled a presidential campaign. A conservative Republican with deep national political connections, Oxford had been a fundraising "Pioneer" for President Bush, raising at least $100,000, and had chaired two of Kay Bailey Hutchison's Senate races in Texas.

Oxford liked Giuliani, but he was looking for assurances on a key issue on which he and Giuliani differ: abortion. "I wanted to understand how he felt about life issues," says Oxford, who is opposed to abortion. "He told me he was committed to reducing abortions."

Giuliani, who supports abortion rights, also told Oxford that he had an issue with "criminalizing abortion," Oxford recalls. "Putting young women and young doctors in jail would not be a positive thing for the United States."