Peter Powers, who served as Rudolph Giuliani’s right-hand man for most of his first term in office, died Thursday from complications from lung cancer. NY1's Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
They knew each other for 58 years, attending Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, Manhattan College and NYU Law School together. Twenty years later, Peter Powers left his career as a prominent tax attorney to run Rudolph Giuliani’s 1989 and 1993 campaigns for mayor, then joined the administration as Deputy Mayor of Operations.
"Peter Powers was my rock. He was the guy I relied on," Giuliani said. "I understood how to reduce crime. He understood how to reduce the budget. He was a tax lawyer, a CPA. He was one of the best tax lawyers in the country when I recruited him. And he gave up an enormous income to come and work for the city."
Quiet but commanding, Powers was sometimes considered the good cop to Giuliani’s bad cop. He was the liasion to other government officials and spearheaded budget cuts.
Joe Lhota served alongside Powers.
"There were so many initiatives in the first two years of the Giuliani administration that changed the trajectory of the city of New York. Peter was involved in every single one of those initiatives," Lhota said. "There were other deputy mayors, but Peter was, without a doubt, the first among equals."
Indeed, Giuliani at one point gave him the title First Deputy Mayor.
"He was the only one with that title, because I trusted him to run the city as well or better than I could," Giuliani said.
Powers left the administration in 1996 to return to the private sector. But he would later chair the Charter Revision Commission and remained a trusted friend and advisor to Giuliani, who said the two would spend often three nights a week together. He died Thursday morning at age 72 after a long fight with cancer.