"I can't take it anymore!" he half-joked, complaining to a campaign volunteer around 10:30 p.m—nearly an hour before he finally learned that he lost the race to Charles Rangel, by around 23 percent to 51 percent.

"I don't understand why it's taking so long. If it doesn't start shaking, it'll be 1 o'clock," he said to a group of supporters in bright yellow Powell shirts, sitting anxiously in the Hamilton Heights Progressive Democratic Club office on Broadway, between 150th and 151st.

Mr. Powell paced back and forth while waiting, dividing his attention between a Fox news report airing on a tiny TV in the corner of the room and a Dell computer that supporters continually refreshed with NY1 results.

"You have to just wait," he said.

At one point, the Fox report went live to Rangel's event.

"Shh!" Mr. Powell told the crowd, wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief and listening as the news report listed Rangel's political supporters who showed to the incumbent's more lavish event.

"When you run against a 40-year political powerhouse, not many people want to go on the record giving you money," Mr. Powell told The Observer before the final results came in. "But we did great."

By 11 p.m, some tired supporters started to file out, giving Mr. Powell high-fives and hugs before departing.

Finally after much delay, Mr. Powell told reporters and the remaining crowd to gather around for a speech. Few people were still watching the small TV by that point, and most hadn't even realized the race was over. 

"Some people can embrace change," Mr. Powell said. "Others have a difficult time letting go."

"This was a wall that we ran into," he said. "Although we may have lost the battle tonight, we will not lose the war." 

"Change is [still] coming," he added.

It was not a stress-free experience, either. "There were times when it was even hard for me to go to sleep at night." But, he said he could always hear a voice telling him, "Keep the faith, baby."

And this is just the beginning. No one can ever stop Adam Clayton Powell IV from public service, he continued, referring to himself in the third person—"not tonight, not any night."

Luckily, he may not even have to sit around for two years, given Rangel's ongoing ethics controversy, he said. "Stay tuned, folks. ... This time, we may not have to wait."

"Powell for Congress may be coming to a block near you very soon." (He did take a brief moment to offer Rangel and his team a luke-warm congratulations.)

Earlier in the evening, supporters had said that Harlem was ready to oust Mr. Rangel.

"We are really confident we're going to change the future," Felix Figueroa, president of the Hamilton Heights Progressive Democratic Club, told The Observer. "People are really tired of Rangel."

Miosotis Muñoz, running for a State Senate seat, said that she and Powell were part of a new group of politicians, working to break the status quo. "They look at us like renegades," she said, adding, "This is a community club that doesn't answer to big bucks."

Regardless of their initial confidence, (when Mr. Powell first arrived, he said he was "feeling great"), after his final speech of the night, Mr. Powell told The Observer that the race was just too crowded. "It was difficult for people to focus," he said. It was always, "'Rangel and his opponents, Rangel and his opponents.'" 

For many voters, Mr. Powell said, it was simply, "'Better the devil I know.'"

As supporters left, he told his fans to hold on to their Powell campaign shirts, since they could come in handy in his next run: "The T-shirts don't have a date." 

Locally, confidence in state government is (or should be) at rock bottom. The Legislature remains a laughing stock, and Governor Paterson simply is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time. Congressman Charles Rangel won't go away. Neither will  State Senator Pedro Espada Jr., who is running for reelection despite an impressive list of criminal charges filed against him by a fellow Democrat, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Still, hope spring eternal, and with that in mind, The Observer endorses the following candidates running in contested primary elections on Sept. 14.

Rick Lazio

After a decade-long absence from New York politics, Rick Lazio is seeking the Republican nomination in this year's gubernatorial race. He is opposed by a Buffalo-based businessman named Carl Paladino, who apparently found it funny when a friend compared Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to, oh, Adolf Hitler. We urge Republicans to support Mr. Lazio, a onetime congressman who ran against Hillary Clinton in the 2000 Senate race.

Mr. Lazio's biggest media moment over the summer came when he attacked the proposed Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan. It was an ugly, shameful tactic, one that exploited the memory of 9/11 in the interests of short-term political gain. The Lazio campaign withdrew the ad, although he continues to oppose the project.

Whatever the merits of Mr. Lazio's case against the Islamic center, he is a far better choice than the appalling Mr. Paladino, whose idea of humor includes racist and pornographic emails. Mr. Lazio is a serious political figure, one who is capable of mounting a credible campaign in the fall against Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

Most political observers believe Mr. Cuomo's election is inevitable, given his name recognition, star power and fund-raising abilities. But the general election should not be a coronation—even if it has been just that in recent gubernatorial elections. Mr. Lazio may be underfunded, but he is not without ideas and alternatives. He will make a case for himself and his party. Mr. Paladino would turn the general election into a joke.

Reshma Saujani

Carolyn Maloney has represented Manhattan's old silk-stocking Congressional district—once the home of John Lindsay and Ed Koch since 1992. It seems fair to say that she hasn't had to break a sweat ever since. Token opponents have been swatted away without much discussion or debate. Every two years, voters in the 14th Congressional District on the Upper East Side and in Queens have marched to the polls and given Ms. Maloney virtually uncontested victories. Not this year.

A 34-year-old hedge-fund lawyer named Reshma Saujani has emerged as a refreshing, energetic alterative to Ms. Maloney. We support her bid to unseat the incumbent as the Democratic Party's nominee in the 14th District. Ms. Saujani is the sort of Democrat who understands that faux populism won't bring back jobs to New York. Ms. Maloney jumped on the bandwagon to "punish" Wall Street after the catastrophes of the last two years, supporting job-killing regulation and interference. Ms. Saujani, who has
worked for three hedge funds, has a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between Wall Street and government. She believes New York and the nation will prosper when politicians stop blaming bankers and financial institutions for the country's economic malaise.

Carolyn Maloney has been a capable if unspectacular member of Congress for nearly 20 years. It's time to bring new energy and fresh ideas to the House. Democrats should choose Reshma Saujan.

Eric Schneiderman

Andrew Cuomo's gubernatorial ambitions will create a vacancy in the attorney general's office next year. A handful of capable Democrats are running for the party's nomination as the state's top law-enforcement official. The Observer endorses the candidacy of State Senator Eric Schneiderman.

Mr. Schneiderman is an energetic, independent lawmaker who will challenge his own party and conventional wisdom in the public's interest. His disdain for Albany's political shenanigans marks him as a serious reformer. He is the best choice in a well-contested race.

"We feel we really had a strong showing and we came back," Trippi said. Hillary Clinton "clearly did the robo-call thing last night because we were coming up on her—and they knocked us down."

Trippi said the Edwards campaign was "already ahead of this" on a lot of states. He cited Oklahoma and Missouri as states in which they expected to perform well. (So, Missouri really is a state!)

As for South Carolina: "We fought back, we got our share of the vote."

And! "Don't look at the numbers," he said. "We could go all the way..... We have the money to go on." He said that they'd raised a lot of money in the last 23 days—something like more than they had in the last quarter, but I couldn't really hear that part that well, nor do I tend to believe statements like that anyway, so no matter. And not to be ungrateful, but the rather paltry buffet table does not look much like the snack offerings of a rich campaign.

Aww. They're playing John Cougar! Ain't that America.

There are just a phenomenal number of reporters here—they've just gotta be excited at pulling Edwards detail on this triumphant night for the man that Hillary Clinton has called "a son of the south" at every opportunity this week.

Oh wow, now they are playing the Arcade Fire, a band popular with the urban young! Very preliminary results are coming in, over the T.V. waves, but not very much at all is going on here besides—wait, there is a man in a big spiky rooster hat and a patterned silk coat. I cannot identify a single reporter here! One woman is saying that service is "super-super-slow here"! That is okay because there are only dozens and dozens of people trying to dine, while the majority of people (the press) are eating from the free buffet, which I am about to plow into like a mack truck. More information to come on the status of the buffet and my eating of it as those events warrant.

Wait, I've just met two young white girls, one 18 and one 17, who are here in the front of the restaurant for a birthday party! The 18-year-old declined to vote in her very first primary. "I didn't know the hooplah about all this stuff," she said. But it was such a crazy election, how could she pass, I asked. "I was watching the thing on TV, who was it Edwards, Obama and Clinton, it was just between Clinton and Obama, they were just dissing each other, they weren't telling each other about anything," she said.