A Night to Remember: 1 Soars, 1 Survives

For Faye Moore, who first heard Barack Obama speak seven years ago at a conference in Chicago, last week's election meant a dream deferred had come to life more vividly than she could have hoped.

For Frank Padavan, it meant a victory celebration deferred, if not ultimately denied, after he had seemed to be ready to repel a challenge for the Senate seat he has held for the past 36 years, only to find himself with a lead too slender to be considered safe as the Board of Elections began counting paper ballots this week.

They wound up watching the Obama tsunami from different sides of the fence, and even if Senator Padavan can avoid being carried out with the tide that claimed two of his nearby Republican colleagues, Serph Maltese of Queens and Caesar Trunzo of Suffolk County, his political survival is likely to be accompanied by a significant diminution of power, since their defeats gave Democrats a majority in the State Senate.

Targeted by Dems, WFP

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Padavan, whom the Democrats and the Working Families Party had identified as one of the potentially vulnerable incumbent Republicans in the Senate, seemed to be holding off the challenge of City Councilman James Gennaro in the 11th Senate District covering eastern Queens. On Election Day, turnout in the district was fairly heavy, according to campaign staffers, but nothing like districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx where waits of more than an hour were common and reflected waves of new Obama voters who figured to go Democratic right down the ballot.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow The Chief-Leader/Michael O'Kane JUBILATION VS. UNCERTAINTY: Even as District Council 37 Local 371 President Faye Moore (left) was rejoicing at Barack Obama's re-election, a more-somber State Sen. Frank Padavan addressed his supporters knowing that even if his slender lead over Democratic challenger James Gennaro held up, he was likely to be returning to Albany as a member of the minority party for the first time.

Ms. Moore, the president of Local 371 of District Council 37, had been caught in one of those long lines when she voted near her Brooklyn home, but by 3 p.m., sitting in a restaurant in Fort Greene, she described the wait as a positive sign.

"What I've seen nationally," she said, "is a lot of young people waiting in line that should break for Obama."

Her local was working phone banks for the Democratic nominee for President both here and in Pennsylvania, where his chances were much more in doubt, and she was planning to head over to the Brooklyn Academy of Music later that afternoon to work the phones herself.

Ms. Moore said she was a bit unsettled by reports she'd gotten about voter intimidation in some parts of the country and machine problems in the same Ohio district where they plagued supporters of John Kerry's 2004 White House run, "but unlike the Kerry election where everybody was walking around with a knot in their stomach, I feel relaxed."

Even before she became head of Local 371 six months earlier, Ms. Moore had been a strong supporter of Mr. Obama, dating back to last year when DC 37 was in Hillary Clinton's camp.

"I was told early on that backing Obama was not reality-based," she said. "I really resented that."

The possibility of a black person becoming President began to seem real to her, she said, during Jesse Jackson's first run in 1984 when "groups started organizing and coalitions began building." After his second campaign fizzled out four years later, she said, "I realized it was not going to happen as soon as I thought."

As she remembers it, it was sometime in 2001 that she began to believe again after hearing Mr. Obama, who was then an Illinois State Senator, for the first time at an immigrant and women's rights forum in Chicago.

'He Captures Your Attention'

"He got the worst speaker's slot: right after lunch," Ms. Moore said. "But he came into the room and he was electric: he was talking about all the issues we cared about. He is not fire and brimstone, but he captures your attention."

She said she turned to Charleen Mitchell, the assistant to then-Local 371 President Charles Ensley, and said, "We're in the presence of somebody special."

When she saw Mr. Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Ms. Moore continued, "I said to myself, 'If this was another country, he would be a candidate for President.' It turns out I was wrong, and I'm glad."

Fifteen months ago, when he was still a decided underdog to Senator Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Ms. Moore sent his campaign a $100 check. She would subsequently make additional donations of about $300, saying, "I contributed more to him than any candidate in my life because I really believed in him. I thought he was a real credible candidate; I thought a lot of people had underestimated him."

Mr. Obama confronted the biggest crisis of his primary campaign in March — when DVDs of incendiary remarks harshly criticizing this country and its leadership by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, created a media furor — by giving a speech in which he addressed his relationship with Reverend Wright as part of a broader discussion of race in America.

"Like many times during this campaign, I cried at the end," Ms. Moore said. "I don't think people know how difficult it is to be a public figure without becoming a stereotype. That was the first time he really nailed it in a way that people could understand. He was telling people, yeah, we've got a real problem here, but he was also able to keep being the candidate" without disowning his past association with Reverend Wright. "He dealt with the issue rather than the messenger. What he has been able to do during this election is have people confront how they feel about race in this country."

Elitist Charge 'Insulting'

It was during that point in the campaign that Senator Clinton began raising the issue of elitism, capitalizing on what Mr. Obama himself later called his biggest blunder: saying during a fund-raiser in San Francisco that he was having trouble connecting with working-class whites because some of them had grown "bitter" when confronted by hard times and "retreated" into "guns and religion" rather than taking a broader view.

However ill-considered his remark may have been, Ms. Moore said, "The elitist claim was insulting. This wasn't the son of the president of BET — it was a working-class kid who picked himself up."

It was not until early May, when Senator Obama defeated Senator Clinton by 14 points in the North Carolina primary on the same night that he lost to her by less than two points in Indiana that Ms. Moore became convinced that he had both solidified his support among black voters while getting enough votes from whites in two states that traditionally go Republican that he could not only win his party's nomination but be elected in November.

'Past Bradley's Time'

"I worry about the polling data," she said last Tuesday afternoon, "but this is not [Tom] Bradley's time; it isn't Harold Washington's time," referring to the first black Mayors of Los Angeles and Chicago, the former of whom has become best-remembered for losing a race for California Governor after late polls showed him with a comfortable lead.

"I do think," Ms. Moore added, "Obama learned some lessons from Harold Washington about engaging all people and getting as many people in the tent as you can."

It was not long after the 8 p.m. closing time for the polls in Pennsylvania that the networks called the state for Mr. Obama, making clear that it would be difficult for John McCain to pull an upset.

Senator Padavan, an aide had said that morning, would be arriving about that time at Reception House on Northern Blvd. for what he hoped would be a victory party, but a staffer from his district office who was at the catering hall said he was going first to his campaign office and would not be at the party until about 9:20.

The campaign office, located on the second floor of a building on Bell Blvd. in Bayside, was a surprisingly spare operation. The outer office contained a few chairs and tables littered with campaign literature and signs ("Nobody Cares Like Frank"), a half-dozen phones and the leftovers of a couple of boxes of donuts. There were no TVs on the premises, and a radio that was blaring national election returns was shut off because the news wasn't helping the mood among the dozen or so staffers and volunteers who were there.

Many Unhappy Returns

"My 13-year-old's giving me updates," one staffer said as he shut off his cell phone. "She's almost as depressed as I am."

Another one chimed in, "Has McCain conceded yet? We lost Pennsylvania — that's it. He has to win every state Bush took [in 2004]. That's not gonna happen."

By 9 p.m., Queens Republican Party chairman Phil Ragusa was instructing the volunteers in how to record voting tallies that would be phoned in from the field, writing down both the election and assembly districts. Fifteen minutes later, calls started coming in, with the results entered on the tally sheets, which were then brought to the inner office.

Shortly after 9:20, when he was already supposed to be at the victory reception, Mr. Padavan entered the campaign office, a day of racing through the district making a final push finally concluded. Asked how he was feeling, he said, "I don't know." After a pause, he said, "I feel fine," then walked into the inner office.

Just before 9:30, a reporter from a Queens weekly newspaper said a couple of the networks had called Ohio for Mr. Obama, and it now seemed obvious that the presidential race had been decided. "It's like the Watergate election all over again," the reporter remarked, referring to Jimmy Carter's 1976 victory.

Big Lead Only Temporary

Twenty minutes later, someone's wife called to say that New York 1 showed Mr. Padavan with 56 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Council Member Gennaro. But it was subsequently learned that this count was based on less than 40 percent of the votes being counted. One staffer noted that phone calls had stopped coming in with field tallies, meaning that those sitting in the inner office with Mr. Padavan had a lot larger count than that, and none of them, judging by their faces, seemed terribly enthused by what they knew.

Fifteen minutes later, one staffer told a caller, "We're trending good. I just don't know if it's 53 [percent], 52 or 59, and if it's 52 we'll be back against this guy in two years."

Ten minutes later, another wife called to say that New York 1's count was now 51-49 in Mr. Padavan's favor. Suddenly 52 percent of the vote and the prospect of another challenge from Mr. Gennaro in 2010 didn't seem like such a terrible state of affairs, but Mr. Padavan would never get back to that point.

A half-dozen men, all of them appearing to be at least 60, sat toward the back of the room, casually talking politics, showing no outward signs of alarm. The younger staffers began to pace nervously, however, and after one got news that a party official had just been refused admission to Senator Maltese's headquarters, he said, "I don't think they're in a celebratory mood over there." It had just been learned that New York 1 had Mr. Maltese trailing his Democratic City Council challenger, Joe Addabbo, by 18 points.

Margin 'An Embarrassment'

A few minutes later, the margin widened to 20, and a staffer said, "That's an embarrassment. A 19-year incumbent."

Another one voiced the concern that they were all feeling even as Mr. Padavan clung to his slim lead: that he would be returning to Albany in January as a member of the minority party in the Senate for the first time since he came there in 1973.

"It's very unlikely we have a majority unless we win some of those western New York races" in the Buffalo area.

One of the older volunteers interjected, "I don't think it's happening."

The next update from New York 1 that was phoned in had Mr. Padavan still leading by just two points, but his vote lead had grown to 1,300.

The younger staffer remarked, "Well, good, you won. So what?" Minority party status for the Republicans, he said, would mean Mr. Padavan's budget would be cut sharply, from about $1 million to less than one-third that amount, which would mean both a reduction in staff jobs and the prospect that Democrats "can raise taxes with impunity."

A few minutes later, just before 11, Senator Padavan stepped out of the inner office and was asked whether he planned to address the people waiting for him at Reception House.

"I'm gonna have to," he replied.

723-Vote Lead, Long Count Ahead

He entered the catering hall 25 minutes later, while Senator McCain was making his concession speech, with New York 1 showing him ahead of Councilman Gennaro by about eight-tenths of a percent with 98 percent of the ballots counted. It translated to a lead of 723 votes before paper ballots began being tallied Nov. 11, after the voting machines were opened at the Board of Elections to get an official count. A final result would not come soon; even if Mr. Padavan's lead held, there was the likelihood that his opponent would seek a recount in what had become a bitter contest in its closing weeks.

Mr. Padavan made clear that he believed Mr. Gennaro had committed a breach of etiquette by organizing a demonstration outside his headquarters a few days earlier. "That was unique and very rarely happens in politics," he told his audience. "It's sleazy."

"We are narrowly ahead," Mr. Padavan said. It was too close to proclaim victory, he explained, and so he wanted to just thank those who had worked so hard on his behalf.

He spoke of the high ratings he had gotten from environmental groups, and his endorsements by 40 unions, including most of the major municipal ones on both the civilian and uniformed sides.

Cites Obama's Impact

Noting that he and Senator Trunzo had both first been elected in 1972, Mr. Padavan said, "You know there was a landslide effect beginning with President-elect Obama and all the way down the line."

His own campaign literature had highlighted his working relationship with the Democratic Assemblywoman from the district, Barbara Clark, hoping that this and the support of unions that are viewed as Democratic-friendly like DC 37 and the United Federation of Teachers would persuade voters backing Senator Obama to split their tickets. That so many hadn't done so in his race and Mr. Trunzo's, Mr. Padavan told his supporters, may have been attributable to there having been so many first-time voters who were unlikely to be familiar with the community work done by local legislators.

"That's what politics is about," he said. "It's full of surprises."

Less than a half-hour later, speaking before a considerably larger crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, Mr. Obama voiced a similar sentiment but with a markedly happier tone. Invoking the words of Sam Cooke's civil rights anthem, the President-elect said, "It's been a long time coming. But tonight ... change has come to America."

'Six Feet Off the Ground'

Ms. Moore, reached shortly before 1 a.m., was jubilant. She had missed the early returns in favor of a rehearsal with the Charles Moore Dance Theatre, but had gotten home just in time to hear that the results from the West Coast had prompted the networks to declare Mr. Obama the winner, she said, adding, "I'm six feet off the ground. My neighborhood has erupted" with residents "of all colors outside, just happy to be together in this moment.

"It's a joyous moment, but it's not a time for frivolous celebration," Ms. Moore said. "I talk to people who drank out of 'colored' water fountains and sat in the backs of buses, and so I know how serious this is."

She continued, "It's an awesome, awesome feeling. I'm excited about the prospect of him being President of the United States. It's something that still feels funny to say. You knew it could happen, but you also knew what had happened in the last two elections. This one, it's without controversy. That, I think, is really going to be good for America, and I'm so glad that it's Barack Obama it happened with."