Inside a Kingdom of Allegiances

Oxford concluded that Giuliani was "wrestling with these issues and his heart was in the right place." He signed on as campaign chairman and came to represent what political junkies have long referred to as the "grown-up" of the operation.

"I think the last campaign he worked on was McKinley's reelection," jokes Carbonetti.

Together with campaign manager Mike DuHaime, a 34-year-old GOP comer hired by Carbonetti, the three put together an operation considered disciplined and organized -- and one in which the old friends and insiders had a seat at the table. Mastro is a regular at weekly campaign meetings as a legal adviser; Joe Lhota, a cable executive who was New York City's budget director, has been tasked with talking to reporters about Giuliani's record as mayor; Rudy Washington, a former deputy mayor who suffers from respiratory ailments resulting from the time he spent at Ground Zero after Sept. 11, is chairman of the New York City campaign.

Another close friend, Ted Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general who's known Giuliani since their days in the Reagan administration, chairs the campaign's justice advisory committee.

In his book, Giuliani wrote that the only time he cried on Sept. 11 was when he realized from a reporter's question that Olson's wife, Barbara, a well-known Republican pundit, had been on one of the hijacked planes. Olson said in an interview that he supports Giuliani in part because of the former mayor's decisive handling of 9/11 and its aftermath.

"His instincts were instantaneous and genuine. He went to where the problem was. He knew the importance of compassion and of stability -- all of those things came naturally to him," says Olson, recently mentioned as a candidate for Bush's attorney general and a key legal player in the 2000 vote recount fight in Florida. "In that situation, you can't say to yourself, gee, I'm gonna run for president someday so this is how I should behave."

On the question of what one adviser in a now famous memo called Giuliani's "weirdness factor" -- his multiple marriages, a histrionic personal life, a son who doesn't speak to him, among other well-told stories -- Olson says:

"I think voters will look at the whole person. . . . What are the characteristics that are important? At the end of the day, am I electing the captain of my softball team or . . . the president of the United States?"

'Everyone Came Back to Help'

Carbonetti's grandfather, Louis, a local Democratic community leader, and Rudy's father, Harold, were best friends a generation ago, when the Giulianis lived in Brooklyn and the Carbonettis lived in East Harlem (then known as Italian Harlem). Giuliani's Uncle Rudy was a cop in East Harlem, and Harold and Louis used to pick him up from his shift.

Carbonetti's father, Lou, and Giuliani were not close, but reacquainted when Giuliani became a public figure. So, when Giuliani first ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1989, the younger Carbonetti didn't think twice about leaving Boston University to become a gofer.

"When Rudy ran for mayor obviously everyone worked for him. Everybody came back to go and help," he says.

After the loss, Carbonetti returned to Boston to finish school and tend bar. But he left school once again and was back in New York in 1993, this time opening storefronts in all the boroughs for Giuliani's next race for mayor. When Giuliani won, Carbonetti was given the powerful job as head of appointments. He was 24 years old and didn't have a college degree.