Giuliani Beats Dinkins to Be GOP N.Y. Mayor : Election: Former federal prosecutor narrowly edges the city’s first black chief executive in a watershed contest. It was a rematch of 1989.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the tough-talking former federal prosecutor whose campaign stressed crime, competence and a better business climate, Tuesday was elected New York City’s first Republican chief executive in more than a quarter of a century, defeating Mayor David N. Dinkins in a cliffhanger election.

With 99% of the vote counted, Giuliani had 51% of the vote and Dinkins had 48%.

Giuliani won even though both his running mates lost. Dinkins became the first African-American mayor of a major city not to win a second term in office.

“As Jackie Gleason used to say, ‘How sweet is is,’ ” said Giuliani’s boyhood friend and close adviser Peter Powers. He told supporters shouting “Rudy! Rudy!” that Dinkins had called the candidate and had conceded.

Giuliani became the first Republican mayor since John V. Lindsay was elected 28 years ago. He faces a racially divided city with serious fiscal problems--recurring budget deficits and unions resistant to his platform of efficiencies and a smaller municipal work force.

He won with the support of former Mayor Edward I. Koch, and, in a symbolic start of his Administration, Giuliani planned to walk the streets of minority neighborhoods to promote healing.

Throughout the evening, Giuliani, 49, held a frail one-point lead.

“This will be a nail biter,” Bill Lynch, Dinkins’ principal strategist and the architect of his successful campaign four years ago, said as the evening wore on.

“We feel pretty confident,” said Giuliani, the only son of a Brooklyn bar owner. As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani gained a national reputation as a mob buster and as a fighter of Wall Street corruption, in cases that were at times both sensational and controversial.

Even though Dinkins, 66, had called Giuliani gracefully in defeat, some of his advisers still were suggesting challenging the outcome on the basis of absentee ballots and possible irregularities.

Mirroring the campaign, the election was racially divided, according to exit polls. Three quarters of white voters cast their ballots for Giuliani while 95% of black voters picked the mayor, who was getting about 66% of the Latino vote.

The exit poll results showed Dinkins, who got heavy support from President Clinton and his Administration, also running well with Jewish voters and gays. Giuliani ran very strongly among Catholics.

Until early this morning, the election appeared to be a near repeat of the two candidates’ race four years ago--one of the closest in New York City’s history--which Dinkins won by less than 50,000 votes.

Crime and race relations again were key issues--and tended, according to exit polls, to cancel out either candidate’s advantage. Some 66% of voters said they believed that Giuliani, would do a better job fighting crime. Almost an equal number said they believed Dinkins, would be more effective in bringing races together.

Unlike Dinkins, Giuliani has advocated sharply curtailing benefits for the homeless, dramatically cutting the city’s work force and possibly privatizing at least four municipal hospitals.

In a highly unusual referendum, residents of Staten Island were casting their ballots by a two to one margin to change the city’s geography by seceding--an action that ultimately would require permission from the New York state Legislature and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

Giuliani’s victory was a bitter blow to Cuomo, who is expected to seek a fourth term as governor next year. The election also had been watched as a key test of the pulling power of President Clinton in a highly important urban setting.

As he awaited results, Giuliani compared the New York and Los Angeles mayoral contests in an interview.

“The Los Angeles election was driven by local issues just like New York has been--crime, schools and jobs,” he said.

The bitterness of the campaign extended to Election Day as well. Giuliani charged that his campaign workers had been “overrun” with more than 1,200 calls reporting “serious impediments” to voting at polling places throughout the city. Dinkins charged that some of Giuliani’s poll watchers were demanding to see identification and were intimidating some voters.

The Giuliani forces complained that in some polling booths levers on the line beside Giuliani’s name would not work. They charged that in some election districts in Manhattan, longtime voters were no longer listed on the books and were asked to fill out paper ballots.

Naomi Bernstein, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections, said none of the charges filed by either side had yet been substantiated.

The charges did, however, underline the closeness of the race.

Surveys taken just before the election showed the race to be a statistical dead heat--which stressed the importance for both the mayor and his challenger of mobilizing their core constituencies.

In 1989, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by better than four to one, Dinkins constructed his victory coalition by winning the allegiance of 40% of Jewish voters and 70% of Latino voters--atop a solid base of support of better than 98% of black voters.

In that race, a small army of 10,000 volunteers helped the mayor round up voters. But four years later, the large and powerful United Federation of Teachers decided to remain neutral--depriving Dinkins of badly needed manpower.

Giuliani ran a far more skillful campaign than he did four years ago; the former U.S. attorney worked to soften his prosecutorial image with public appearances with his wife and young son and daughter. At the same time, he sought to convince voters that, unlike Dinkins, he would be a “hands-on mayor” and a force for change--reducing the number of municipal employees, improving the tax climate for small business and improving the school system.

Crime and the quality of life were key issues.

Times staff writer Josh Getlin also contributed to this story.