Giuliani time New York's Republican mayor

...Facing a wounded candidate and divided Democrats (many Democratic office holders and labor leaders sat out the campaign or endorsed the mayor) Giuliani had only to control his penchant for rhetorical overkill and coast to victory...

...Giuliani's big win came as no surprise under the circumstances: he was visibly and energetically on the job during a period of improving economic conditions, falling crime rates, and growing disenchantment with classic liberal solutions to urban problems...

...They would no longer have to find inventive ways to report on a noncampaign leading to an inevitable conclusion: Giuliani's landslide victory against Democrat Ruth Messinger, Manhattan borough president...

...Senate seat held by Senator Moynihan or (are we ready for this...

...When it became apparent that sooner or later even the pope was likely to come down on him for his rudeness, Giuliani issued a politician's "If-I-offended-anyone" apology and the storm passed...

...In the Democratic primary, Messinger barely squeaked out a 40 percent plurality to avoid a run-off with the Reverend Al Sharpton...

...he might go for a spot on the Republican national ticket...

...Economic improvements owed little to the mayor, and the fall in crime (making New York, amazingly, one of the safest big cities in the country) began during the last two years of David Dinkins's administration...

...He goofed famously once when, following the city's Columbus Day parade, he scolded Messinger, who is Jewish, for not attending the day's Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral...

...Messinger's defeat seems to ring a death knell for trendy liberalism, but plenty of liberals (mostly Democrats) were elected to office along with Giuliani...

...Essentially, his was a Rudy one-note campaign: tough on crime...

...But incumbents profit from upturns on their watch, no matter who deserves the credit...

...In 2000, a year before his lame-duck term expires, Giuliani might run for the U.S...

...Antonio Ramirez, a retired labor union editor, is a life-long New Yorker...

...His education policies, like everyone else's, are a mish-mash...

...But Giuliani's critics aren't wrong, New York's unemployment rate, twice the national average, still lags way behind those of other major cities...

...Beside his incumbent's advantages, Giuliani was also favored by a mighty campaign war chest fed by companies the city does business with, and by the Democrats' disarray...

...Now, with a significant Giuliani mandate (he was elected in 1993 with a bare 2 percent margin), some pundits are touting the mayor as a prospect for national office...

...In an election-week article in New York magazine, reporter Mark Jacobson, speculating on this, concluded that even New Yorkers who beat the drums for the mayor might draw the line at Rudy in the White House...

...Although he champions fiscal restraint, the death penalty, privatization of public services, and a harsh hand toward those on welfare, the mayor is right up there with liberals supporting abortion-on-demand, gun-control, immigrant rights, and gay rights...

...some pre-election estimates had the Republican incumbent clobbering Messinger by 20 to 30 points.When Giuliani squeaked through with a mere 16 percent edge (57 to 41), the mayor's spinmeisters rushed to remind us that, after all, New York's Democrats outnumber Republicans five-to-one...

...It would be a mistake to read too much significance into Giuliani's victory...

...To be fair, Giuliani and his police chiefs introduced crime-fighting measures, chiefly an aggressive crackdown on "quality of life" crimes-panhandling, public drinking, and the like-that apparently discouraged more serious crime...

...When several city police officers tortured Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, in a Brooklyn police station, one of the cops reportedly told the victim: "This is Giuliani time now...

...For him to claim he is a mainstream conservative, in the Gingrich mode, he has a lot of ground to cover...

...Indeed, Giuliani's victory seemed such a done deal that pundits kept predicting an ever-wider margin of victory...

...Potential opponents who might have given the mayor a stronger run for his money looked at the polls and headed for cover: Comptroller Alan Hevesi, one of those who passed, is the Democratic front-runner for 2001 when, thanks to term-limit foolishness, both he and Giuliani will be looking for jobs...

...Much was made, from time to time, about Messinger's move to the political center but, in truth, if she were going to move at all there is no way, short of mounting the barricades, that she could possibly have moved any further left...

...Giuliani is notoriously thin-skinned and abrasive...

...In a comedy-of-errors, the antiquated Board of Elections took over a week to certify Messinger's victory over Sharpton, who took the opportunity, six weeks before the general election, to hog the spotlight with his stock-in-trade charges of racism...

...his panacea being mayoral control...

...Can we, he asked, trust this man with the bomb...

...on November 4 when radio and television stations announced that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had been re-elected for a second term may well have been the city's political reporters heaving a sigh of relief...

...New Yorkers, proud of their city's tougher-than-thou reputation, cheer him on sometimes, but at other times he brings out the worst in people...

...Giuliani, who consistently defends policemen whenever they are charged with brutality (the subject of a recent scathing report by Amnesty International), opposes independent civilian complaint review, saying only cops should investigate charges against cops...

...Messinger, a long-time causenik who served in the City Council representing Manhattan's frequently off-the-wall liberal-to-radical Upper West Side before graduating to the relatively powerless borough president's job, started the race burdened by her ultra-liberal record and internal Democratic party battles...