EW YORK - Rudolph Giuliani, the city's famously combative mayor and a candidate in the nation's hottest Senate race, announced yesterday that he is battling prostate cancer and is uncertain whether he will continue his campaign.
The mayor emphasized at a news conference that he has been told his is a ''treatable form'' of the cancer, confined to the prostate gland, and that it was caught at ''a very, very early stage.''
However, when asked if the disease would force him out of the Senate race, he replied, ''I have no idea.''
''I think in fairness to me, to the Republican Party, to all of the parties, and everybody else, you need some time to think about it,'' he said. ''I really need to know what the course of treatment is going to be before I can evaluate. ... Then, I will figure out, does it make sense this year or doesn't it or whatever.''
Since he has known his diagnosis for just a day, Giuliani said, he and doctors have just begun the process of deciding what kind of treatment he should undergo - radiation, hormones, surgery, or some combination. He said he will probably have to take some time off from the job and from the campaign trail during his treatment, but hopes his absence won't extend for ''months and months.''
Beyond the unsettling diagnosis, Giuliani said he feels great and enjoys ''perfect'' health. Asked whether coping with the disease might make him ''nicer,'' the mayor, known to delight in tagging annoying questioners as ''silly'' and ''jerks,'' drew laughter with his reply: ''No way.''
The 55-year-old mayor is running for the US Senate against first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and has raised nearly $20 million for his campaign. The race, which polls show to be extremely tight, has such a high national profile that his news conference yesterday was broadcast live on CNN.
Clinton said, through a spokesman, that she had spoken briefly to the mayor and told him her prayers were with him.
Giuliani's speedy announcement of his diagnosis is the result of having been spotted Tuesday coming out of Mt. Sinai Hospital. New York 1, the local news cable channel, reported late that night that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. At his news conference yesterday, Giuliani confirmed the report, saying he had gone to Mt. Sinai for a biopsy and that his doctor told him later in the afternoon that the results were positive.
The biopsy followed a blood test two weeks ago that showed an elevated prostate specific antigen - a warning of a possible malignancy.
Giuliani said yesterday that the diagnosis ''brings up very painful memories.'' His father died of prostate cancer in 1981 at age 73. However, the mayor noted that back then, there was no treatment for the disease and no way to detect it early.
Medical statistics indicate that 90 percent of men with prostate cancer survive the disease, at least for the first five years after detection.
New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, a good friend of Giuliani's, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March 1999, was back in the ballpark by mid-April, and led his team to the World Series. City comptroller Alan Hevesi, who is thinking about running for mayor in 2001, underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1996 and resumed his job within a matter of weeks.
Political figures of all stripes sent Giuliani good wishes for a speedy recovery.
The announcement caused a great stir in the city's political circles and prompted speculation on a number of possible scenarios.
One envisions Giuliani dropping out of the Senate race and then, two years from now, running for the governor's seat. (Term-limit laws prevent him from running a third time for mayor.) It is widely speculated that the current governor, George Pataki, another Republican with national ambitions, may not run for reelection.
Some who make this prediction believe his medical condition could provide Giuliani with an excuse for doing what he half-wants to do, anyway. His numbers have been dropping in the polls, and many have noted that his temperament seems better-suited to executive than to legislative office.
Giuliani has also publicly expressed worries over the fact that, if he wins the Senate race, the city's public advocate, Mark Green, would automatically succeed him for one year until the mayoral election of November 2001. Giuliani dislikes Green personally and politically, and fears his brand of traditional big-city liberalism will overturn much of his own legacy.
A very different scenario sees Giuliani staying in the Senate race and his battle with cancer giving him a political boost - a dimension of sympathy and humanity, which he has seemed, especially in recent months, to lack. One Republican consultant said, ''Certainly it's going to be hard for anybody to attack him for quite a while.''
A third scenario has Giuliani's prospects gravely damaged by his disease. Nobody in recent memory has ever successfully run for higher office while undergoing treatment for something as serious as cancer.
Others think the announcement of his diagnosis will have no political effect. Prominent pollsters John Zogby and Maurice Carroll said yesterday that the revelation probably won't make, in Carroll's words, ''a dime's bit of difference'' in the election results.
Mary Leonard of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
