"Score one for Donna" was how the New York Daily News headlined Monday's court decision to bar the city mayor's mistress from the mayoral home.
The ruling, citing the need to protect the Giuliani children from unplanned exposure to Mr Rudy Giuliani's new companion, Ms Judith Nathan, marks another brutally public milestone in his divorce battle with Ms Donna Hanover. As they fight out publicly the end of their 16-year marriage, the couple have been sharing the 200year-old Gracie Mansions. The mansion, Ms Hanover argued, is essentially a private residence - hence the barring order.
Judge Judith Gische acknowledged there were public rooms in the building but said the children had an overriding interest in being able to roam around their home without distinguishing private from public rooms. "There is no public or governmental interest served by having [Ms Nathan]) at the mansion," she ruled.
And she ordered Ms Nathan not to appear at functions where the children might be present. Should the unhappy couple fail to agree on where and when Ms Nathan could meet the children within 30 days, Judge Gische warned that she might appoint a law guardian on their behalf.
A spokesman for Mr Giuliani welcomed that part of the decision while distancing himself from the barring order. Mr Giuliani has said repeatedly he wants the children to meet the woman he hopes will remain in his life forever. He has praised her for standing by him during his fight against prostate cancer.
But the judge also ruled out reinstating a gag order, more observed in the breach than in compliance, urging the couple instead to tone down the public recriminations. She specifically reprimanded the mayor for a series of attacks on Ms Hanover during the Mother's Day weekend when his lawyer described her as "an uncaring mother" who was "howling like a stuck pig". The publicity that ensued was hurtful to the children, Andrew (15) and Caroline (11), the judge said.
Mr Giuliani seems incapable of showing restraint. It was he, after all, who called a press conference last year to announce to his wife that he loved another woman and would be seeking a separation. Ms Hanover retaliated in kind by holding her own press conference to reveal a previous affair of her husband's.
And Mr Giuliani, in a bizarre attempt to elicit public sympathy two weeks ago, allowed his aides to leak to People magazine the fact that cancer treatment had made him temporarily impotent. His friend, the comedian Jacky Mason, summed up the report in the Daily News with the words, "The mayor can't have a paramour if he can't paraform." A woman columnist retorted that such an assumption that affairs of the heart rested on the strength of the male organ was typically male.
Mr Giuliani's first marriage was annulled after 13 years on the ground that the parties were second cousins.
