In races that were tight, tighter and not tight at all, Republicans swept up the three big prizes in off-year elections: mayor of New York, governor of New Jersey and governor of Virginia.
Rudolph Giuliani of New York, Christie Whitman of New Jersey and George Allen of Virginia did it by bucking trends on a day that was generally kind to Democrats and incumbents.Also Tuesday, incumbents won mayoral races in Seattle, Houston and Cleveland; and new Democratic mayors were elected in Boston and Pittsburgh, among other places.
Those votes all went as expected. But the New Jersey, New York and Virginia races trampled the conventional wisdom.
- In New York, Giuliani became the first Republican mayor in 20 years, since the liberal John Lindsay. He defeated the city's first black mayor, David Dinkins, by a slender margin in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
Giuliani had 903,114 votes, or 51 percent, to Dinkins' 858,868 votes, or 48 percent.
After a race tinged with racial tension, in which voting was starkly along ethnic lines, Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, promised to be a mayor who would be "sensitive to our diversity and evenhanded in every way possible."
- In New Jersey, Whitman narrowly ousted the unpopular Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio, despite polls that put her behind and political insiders who sneered that she was about to blow a golden opportunity. "They see through the pundits," Whitman said of New Jersey voters Wednesday morning.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Whitman had 1,208,806 votes, or 50 percent, to Florio's 1,175,628, or 48 percent. Seventeen independent candidates split the rest.
Whitman told supporters that New Jersey voters had "sent a message right across this nation." That message, apparently, was that a governor who imposes the largest tax increase in his state's history, as Florio did, shouldn't count on a long-term lease at the governor's mansion.
- In Virginia, Allen, the son and namesake of the late football coach, came from behind in the polls to snatch the statehouse from Democratic hands, defeating former Attorney General Mary Sue Terry. Incumbent L. Douglas Wilder was barred by law from seeking a second consecutive term.
Allen will govern the state with a Democratic lieutenant governor, Don Beyer, who defeated Republican Mike Farris; and a Republican attorney general, Jim Gilmore, who defeated Democrat Bill Dolan.
With all precincts reporting, Allen had 1,037,200 votes, or 58 percent, to Terry's 730,219, or 41 percent.
"We have a tidal wave of change that has swept across Virginia," Terry said in her concession speech.
Dinkins' loss in New York means that for the first time in 20 years, not one of the nation's five largest cities will be led by a black mayor. But in smaller cities, black candidates generally did well.
Seattle re-elected its first black mayor, Norm Rice, by a whopping margin; Rochester, N.Y., elected its first black mayor, William A. Johnson Jr.; and Minneapolis elected its first black and first woman mayor, Sharon Sayles Belton.
However, in Hartford, Conn., a white independent candidate, Michael Peters, upset Mayor Carrie Saxon Perry, a three-term Democratic incumbent who was the first black woman elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
Among incumbents who did exceedingly well, Houston's Bob Lanier captured 91 percent of the vote in his re-election victory, and Cleveland's Michael White got 83 percent.
Boston elected a Democrat, as usual, but recorded a first: The new mayor, Thomas Menino, is the first Italian-American mayor in the city's history and the first non-Irish-American in more than 60 years.
In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young's successor will be former state Supreme Court justice Dennis Archer, who set a brash goal for his administration:
"Wherever you go, when you say you're from Detroit, I want people to be able to say, `My gosh, aren't you lucky to be from such a great city!' " Archer said.