Stressing Conciliatory Politics Aided Dinkins : Election: Democrat turned back Giuliani’s efforts to make campaign into referendum on character.

Democrat David N. Dinkins defeated former U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani Tuesday by stressing the politics of conciliation in the face of Giuliani’s efforts to turn the election into a referendum on character and competence.

The 62-year-old Manhattan Borough president, who becomes the city’s first black mayor, forged his winning coalition by building on his solid black base. He received virtually all black votes, 21% of all those cast, according to a WNBC-TV/New York Newsday exit poll. He also carried 71% of the Latino vote, 8% of the electorate. The 31% of the white vote he gained was enough to put him over the top.

The election once again underscored the fact that New York is a liberal, Democratic city. Fully 56% of the voters called themselves Democrats, and they cast their ballots 2 to 1 for Dinkins; 35% labeled themselves as liberals and they voted almost 3 to 1 for Dinkins.

“How far we have come since the days when my father was young,” Dinkins told cheering supporters with his father at his side. “This year voters rejected the calls of fear and spoke with voices of hope. Nov. 7, 1989, is a date that will live in history.”

” . . . We passed another milestone on freedom’s road, a victory not for African-Americans alone but for all New Yorkers and all Americans. Tonight is special in our city for another reason: No matter how tough things got in this campaign, we refused to yield the moral high ground,” Dinkins said, amid cries of “David! David!”

“Whatever the final margin, I like to think we won a great victory against division and suspicion.”

Earlier, Giuliani telephoned Dinkins to offer his congratulations.

“I have just spoken to Mayor-elect Dinkins,” the former prosecutor said in his concession speech. Volleys of booing at Dinkins’ name rang out in the ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt amid chants of “Recount! Recount!”

Giuliani had to shout to quiet the crowd.

“David Dinkins’ victory is a historic event,” the candidate told his disappointed supporters, who shouted back: “No! No!”

“It is very important for this city to come together, we are going to unify behind the mayor of New York because that’s the Democratic process and we believe in it,” Giuliani added. “David Dinkins has achieved a historic victory here . . . David Dinkins will have a difficult task ahead of him.”

Despite intensive campaigning in Jewish neighborhoods, Dinkins failed to carry the Jewish vote. Jews--traditionally loyal to the Democratic Party--voted for Giuliani 3 to 2, according to the WNBC-TV/New York Newsday survey. According to the exit poll, 52% of Jews said the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s involvement in the Dinkins campaign made it less likely they would vote for the Democratic contender.

Giuliani, as expected, carried white Roman Catholics handily, winning by a better than 3-1 margin. He also carried independents and Republicans, but the total of both groups only composed 38% of voters.

The defection of Jews from the Democratic Party was unusual and will present a major challenge for Dinkins as mayor. During the campaign, in an effort at reassurance, he had pledged before Jewish groups that Jackson would play no part in his Administration.

According to the exit poll, Giuliani and Dinkins split the vote among men about evenly, while women gave Dinkins a decisive majority.

As the results came in, Dinkins waited in his suite in a mid-Manhattan hotel. At one point, the soft-spoken candidate who majored in mathematics in college took out a small calculator to add up some of the figures.

The election confirmed that the biggest concerns Dinkins as mayor will have to face are crime and drugs. Almost one-third of voters listed those as their principal worries. Only 4% cited race relations as the chief problem facing the next mayor.

And in the glow of Dinkins’ victory, voters already were beginning to remember three-term Mayor Edward I. Koch kindly. More than half of those surveyed by WNBC-TV and New York Newsday gave Koch a favorable job rating, against 33% who found his performance in office unfavorable. A total of 15% said they were unsure.

But voters who said they approved of Koch voted for Giuliani, 60% to 38%.

Some 3.2 million registered voters were eligible, and the turnout was heavy--especially in black neighborhoods, where a sense of pride and destiny existed about Dinkins, the son of a Trenton, N.J., barber and longtime veteran of organization politics.

“Everyone was looking forward to this day,” said Shirlene Carter, after waiting a half-hour to vote in Harlem. “I voted for Dinkins . . . I want to see what he is going to do for the city.”

Carter, who works as a domestic, said she was surprised at the turnout when she voted at midday. “I had no idea there would be so many people,” she said.

John Del Giorno, a spokesman for the Board of Elections, said about 60% to 65% of registered voters cast their ballots in the election.

Dinkins, who defeated Koch in the Democratic primary, ran a careful campaign in the mold of Mayor Tom Bradley. He was a non-threatening candidate, stressing inclusion and his ties to New York’s Establishment.

Throughout the primary and the election, he described New York’s multiple ethnic and racial groups as a “gorgeous mosaic” tied together by common needs and interests.

Unlike in the primary, Jackson did not campaign for Dinkins. Koch campaigned with his fellow Democrat, especially among Jewish groups.

The Manhattan Borough president benefited from strong union support. Bill Lynch, Dinkins’ campaign manager, said some 12,000 volunteers were on the phones and on the street getting his candidate’s voters to the polls.

“They have a veritable army,” conceded Raymond Harding, a key Giuliani adviser. In an effort to broaden his base, the former prosecutor also ran as the candidate of the Liberal Party.

“He (Giuliani) came across too much as a prosecutor,” Harding said, seeking to explain his candidate’s defeat.

In an effort to consolidate his Democratic base, Dinkins pictured Giuliani as a Republican in the mold of former President Ronald Reagan, uncaring about the plight of the city. He charged that the White House was using Giuliani to establish a GOP beachhead in New York.

Both the White House and the Democratic National Committee tried to affect the outcome of the mayoral election.

President Bush and his wife campaigned for Giuliani, along with three Cabinet secretaries and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Some of the biggest names in the Democratic Party helped Dinkins. They included Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

Giuliani, in his first try at elected office, tried to picture his Democratic opponent as a captive of clubhouse politics and less than financially tidy.

He attacked Dinkins for failure to pay income taxes two decades ago, for listing conflicting figures on the value of stock in a privately held company the Democratic candidate said he transferred to his son, and for not listing on a city disclosure form a trip he took to France that was partly paid for by a constituent.

And even though he lost the election, Giuliani struck a responsive chord. The WNBC-TV/New York Newsday exit poll of 2,308 voters showed 51% said Dinkins’ handling of his personal and campaign finances made them less confident of his ability to be a good mayor, against 36% who said these issues made no difference.

Staff writers David Treadwell and Karen Tumulty and intern Kevin Davis also contributed to this story.