Mayberry Man.(Rudolph Giuliani)(Biography)

The South Carolina State House, a grand, copper-domed structure in downtown Columbia, is a showplace for the state's long history of hellbent defiance. The most prominent feature on the grounds is a monument to fallen Confederate soldiers, whose virtues "plead for just judgment of the cause in which they perished." Beside it, atop a thirty-foot pole, waves the Rebel flag, the object of fierce national debate a decade ago, when it flew above the capitol dome, and no less conspicuous now, in its new location. Among the nearby statuary stands a life-size likeness of Benjamin R. (Pitchfork Ben) Tillman, the four-term United States senator who led the movement that disenfranchised black voters in 1895 and instituted Jim Crow. Inside the building, cast-iron staircases rise to an elegant lobby, and portraits honor the men who shaped the state's querulous history, including John C. Calhoun, who contrived the rationale--nullification--for Southern secession, and Strom Thurmond, who led the South out of the Democratic Party. The lobby opens at either end to the state's two legislative chambers, which, in March, ratified an amendment to the state constitution that bans not only gay marriage but gay civil unions. That month, the state house of representatives also passed a bill requiring any woman considering abortion to reflect upon an ultrasound image of the fetus.

It was here that Rudolph Giuliani, New York's thrice-married, anti-gun, pro-gay, pro-choice former mayor, found himself one morning in April, in what appeared to be a critical moment in his young campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination. The previous day, during a campaign stop in Florida, he was asked by CNN's Dana Bash if he supported the public funding of abortions. Giuliani seemed flustered by the question and finally answered, "If that's the status of the law, I would, yes."

Even before Giuliani began his run for the Presidency, the consensus, sounded in news columns, blogs, and political journals, was that he could not survive scrutiny of his political heterodoxy and his personal imperfections by the Republican Party's conservative base.

Now, as Giuliani made his way into the capitol, his candidate smile firmly fixed, he was met by reporters. "Mayor, you talk about being a straight shooter," one said. "Is this position you have on abortion something that's going to shoot a hole in a key Republican plank?"

Giuliani said he was comfortable with the fact that some voters would never agree with him, a point he chose to illustrate by telling a story about New York. When he was a novice political candidate, he said, the late Louis Lefkowitz, the longest-serving attorney general in New York history, had taught him the basics of retail campaigning on the streets of the city. "I'm walking along the street, shaking hands," Giuliani recounted, "and this guy started questioning me about some position or other, and he was opposed to me on this position. And I spent twenty minutes trying to convince him. And at some point Louie put his arm around me, and he said"--here Giuliani's voice assumed a gravelly, mock-Lower East Side timbre--" 'Hey, kid, you're not gonna get this guy's vote.' " Giuliani chuckled at his story. The consensus seemed validated--this was a man wholly out of place in the Republican South. "He's toast," the Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard told the Associated Press that day.

When Giuliani left Columbia, he travelled to Charleston, where a group of prosperous-looking potential donors and political insiders were waiting to see him. A closed-door meeting, in a private room at a restaurant called Magnolia's, was scheduled for 1 P.M. But at that moment Giuliani's caravan, including the candidate, in a black S.U.V., and his security team and campaign staff, was creeping through traffic in the busy Market Center of the old city, several blocks away. It was a warm, bright day, and the streets were jammed. Giuliani asked his driver to stop. He got out and started walking toward the restaurant. He was immediately mobbed. "Give her a run for her money, Mayor!" one woman screamed, feeling no need to mention Hillary Clinton by name. A tourist carriage rolled by, and the driver shouted, "Hey, Mayor! I've got three votes for you right here!" Giuliani--wearing his signature dark suit, white dress shirt, and tie--signed autographs, posed for pictures, and even knelt on the sidewalk to be photographed with a dog. "That's our next President, right there," said Chris Workman, a Myrtle Beach firefighter and former McCain supporter, who had chatted with Giuliani with a dip of snuff bulging from his lip.

At Magnolia's, Giuliani's advance people tried to fill time. Barry Wynn, his South Carolina campaign chairman, talked up his candidate's chances, solicited donations, and took questions from the waiting group seated before him. Someone asked what effect the Christian right would have on Giuliani's prospects. "Good question," Wynn replied. He lives in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, the home of Bob Jones University. In South Carolina, another way of saying Christian right is "Greenville Republicans," the group credited with John McCain's undoing in his 2000 run against George W. Bush. Wynn's uncle was Lester Maddox, the axe-handle-wielding Atlanta segregationist who became governor of Georgia. Wynn himself is a former state Party chairman. "I've already talked to a lot of people I consider very hard-core social conservatives, part of the religious right, who are supporting Rudy Giuliani," Wynn said. "I think this idea that someone just blows a whistle and all of a sudden people go heading off in one direction--it doesn't happen that way. It's a little bit of a myth that's created by the press."