Mrs. Feinstein faces fiscal conservative

in San Francisco's mayoralty runoff

SAN FRANCISCO· (AP) Supervisor (City Councilman) Quentin Kopp, à conservative whose underdog mayoral campaign was mainly pegged to city financial problems, faces appointed Mayor Dianne Feinstein tomorrow in a runoff election she never thought would happen.

The mayor went into the stretch with added muscle from President Carter, who endorsed her campaign Friday in a letter from the White House.

Mrs. Feinstein, 46, who wants to become the first woman elected mayor of San Francisco, was named to the post by fellow supervisors in November 1978 after the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

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Kopp, an eight-year member of the board of supervisors, drew 40% of the vote in the Nov. 6 election, enough to force the runoff under a law requiring a candidate to receive more than 50% of the votes cast

to be elected. Mrs. Feinstein drew 42% of the vote to lead the 10candidate field.

The strong showing by the conservative Kopp stunned political analysts and pollsters in one of California's more liberal cities.

Kopp developed a reputation as a financial hardliner who charged fiscal irresponsibility by city administrators.

Much of the campaign focused on a city comptroller's projected $117-million budget shortage next year. Kopp proposals included civil

service reforms, leasing the city zoo and golf courses to private operators and general fiscal pruning.

But while Mrs. Feinstein sniped at Kopp for having a "computer for a heart,” she advocated doubling parking fines, stretching the amortization period to pay costs of city pensions to 20 years from 14 and slapping rush-hour commuters with doubled fares.

Kopp won the endorsement of Gov. Edmund Brown Jr. and former Mayor Joseph Alioto, but the city's two major dailies split their endorsements.

The mayor was making a third bid for a seat she failed to win in 1971 and 1975.

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In a city where an estimated 15% of the 650,000 residents homosexual, both Kopp and the mayor had been competing for the 10% of the votes drawn by the third-place mayoral candidate David Scott. Scott received 20,000 votes.

Scott, a gay activist and a former president of the Board of Permit Appeals, gave the election a potentially critical turn last week, when he endorsed Mrs. Feinstein.