EW YORK - It was the clash of titans, the match of the millennium - Mayor Rudolph Giuliani vs. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the nation's hottest and costliest race for the US Senate.
And, 48 hours from now, it might be a thing of the past.
The state's entire political establishment sits racked with suspense over the question: Will he or won't he? Will Giuliani continue his campaign, despite a string of personal crises that would drive most mortals to a breakdown? Or, as a growing number of friends and foes predict, will he drop out of the contest?
He has said he will decide this week. Athough the signs point to a pullout, nobody knows for sure what comes next.
New Yorkers are hard to shock, but Giuliani's actions of the past two weeks have left jaws dropping all over town.
First, he announced he has prostate cancer. Then he confirmed reports he has been seeing a woman who is not his wife. Then he announced he and his wife, Donna Hanover, are getting a separation. A few hours later, Hanover, who apparently had been given no warning of his newsflash, said that their marriage soured a few years ago when the mayor had an affair with his then-press secretary, Cristyne Lategano, who now runs the city's tourist bureau, a $150,000-a-year job that she got at Giuliani's behest. Both Lategano, who has since married, and Giuliani deny that they had a sexual relationship.
Hanover and the couple's two children flew to her parents' home in California for Mother's Day weekend. Far from staying cooped up, the mayor went out to dinner Friday night with staff members and his new girlfriend, Judith Nathan, a divorced 45-year-old nurse and mother. And afterward, they all took a half-mile stroll up Second Avenue, greeting people and being greeted along the way.
The Daily News plastered their picture on the front page, with the headline, ''Walkin' My Baby Back Home.''
Politicos were agog. No mayor has behaved so brazenly since Jimmy Walker took Betty Compton out to nightclubs in the 1920s. And Walker (a) had a wife who kept mum, (b) never pretended to be a paragon of virtue, and (c) wasn't running in a statewide election.
Clearly, Giuliani was loudly proclaiming independence. But why? To put everything on the table before renewing his campaign - or as prelude to a private life?
The next day, he canceled a speech upstate, saying medical exams made it too painful to sit in a car for three hours, and went to play golf instead.
He may also cancel a fund-raising trip to California, slated for tomorrow and Wednesday. Nobody knows the status of a long-scheduled town-hall interview with Andrea Mitchell, to be broadcast live over MSNBC Thursday night.
Then there is the state Republican Party convention, two weeks away. If Giuliani is not a candidate, somebody has to be ripe for coronation by then.
But if not Giuliani, who? Long Island Congressmen Rick Lazio and Peter King have declared their interest. Giuliani had set up a meeting with Lazio for today, but it was put off, reportedly at the urging of Governor George Pataki.
Pataki poses an intriguing question mark. Two weeks ago, he said he would not run for the Senate if Giuliani dropped out. A close friend said he truly is not interested in the Senate. But what if every big Republican in the state came knocking on his door, backed up by a phone-call from his old Yale classmate, George W. Bush, all begging him to run for the good of the party, the state, the country?
The friend paused and replied, ''I don't know what he'd do then.''
A Pataki candidacy could be Clinton's biggest nightmare. He has none of Giuliani's negatives. He would do better than Giuliani upstate, no worse in the suburbs. He might even do better in New York City, not because more people here would vote for Pataki, but because fewer may vote for Clinton. Minority citizens, who usually don't vote in large numbers, are expected to clamor to the polls, as much to destroy Giuliani as to support Clinton. They might turn out less avidly if her opponent were the genial governor.
In other words, Pataki could win. And even he might be lured to run by the prospect of being hailed, coast to coast, as ''the Hillary killer.''
Clinton remains a strikingly weak candidate. In a recent poll that pits her against six possible Republican candidates, she does not get more than 50 percent of the vote against any of them. In fact, only 37 percent say they would vote for her in all six hypothetical matches.
Pollster John Zogby concludes that Giuliani might still run. ''His numbers have eroded,'' Zogby said, ''but you can't see any evidence that he's in serious trouble.''
