When senior campaign advisers left John F. Kerry's town house around 10 p.m. Tuesday, the decision was made: Even if President Bush were ahead in the popular vote or Electoral College, even if Republicans were calling for him to concede defeat, Kerry would stay in the race until every certifiable vote had been counted.
The Democrats had initially been counting on a victory in Florida based on preelection polling that showed the president's approval rating mired in the mid-40-percent range. They planned for a legal battle if another contested vote count emerged there, as in 2000 -- which made it all the more shocking to Kerry and his aides as Bush's lead in Florida grew more and more solid as the night wore on, according to several campaign officials interviewed yesterday.
By the time his consultants departed Beacon Hill for the campaign's war room, on the 36th floor of the Copley Westin Hotel, the candidate had concluded that his final stand would probably come in the battleground of Ohio -- and he would take as long as he needed to analyze results (they never got better), investigate any reports of voter fraud (there were few), and wait for firmer tallies of the remaining ballots (which ultimately proved insufficient).
Yet Kerry also told his aides that he did not want a protracted recount like the 36-day showdown in Florida four years ago: The idea, Kerry aides, said, was to take 12 hours -- reporters were told to expect news at 10 a.m. Wednesday -- and then the candidate would decide if he should call President Bush with congratulations or fight on. It proved to be a tumultous, emotional night.
''Senator Kerry campaigned on the idea that, unlike the 2000 election, we would count every vote and every vote counted," said Jeanne Shaheen, national chair of the Democrat's campaign. ''But as time went on, it was clear that the new voters and new registrants -- that we hoped would turn out in record numbers -- didn't, for whatever reason."
Campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, who had accompanied Kerry home at about 7 p.m., headed back to the Westin hotel as the grim numbers from Florida began accumulating.
Kerry only grew more nervous as the night went on, pacing at times and running up and down some of his home's five floors to collect papers or make phone calls, according to aides. But he, Cahill, strategists Bob Shrum, and John Sasso, and others were resolute that they would take all the time Ohio officials needed to ensure they had a final vote count, especially with precinct captains in Youngstown, Toledo, and Cleveland's Cuyahoga County, and other targets reporting there were more Kerry ballots to be counted.
At 1:20 a.m., as some Republicans were going on television to press for a concession, Cahill issued a statement saying that ''there are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted" -- a number that baffled some other top Kerry strategists, who sense that Cahill was being overly optimistic about their chance in Ohio.
''Some of our people told us that Bush's final lead in Ohio would be less than 100,000, maybe even as low as 50,000 or 60,000," said a senior Kerry adviser. ''Then if there were 150,000 to 200,000 ballots left to be counted, you can make a plausible case that it was still winnable. I don't know where '250,000 remaining votes' came from. Anyway, Bush held on to a bigger lead, and it turned out there were fewer uncounted votes."
The war room agreed to send Edwards out to Copley Square to address the thousands still waiting for Kerry. A two-minute speech was prepared that, aides, said, was intended to have a tough, direct tone -- to make clear that if Democrats wanted all votes counted this time around, they would be counted.
Some aides stayed up all night, going over the Ohio poll results county-by-county with their precinct captains on the phone. Others went to bed, none of them terribly hopeful.
Senior advisers Joe Lockhart and Joel Johnson, two Clinton veterans who joined the Kerry camp when it was faltering in the polls in late August, repaired to a Westin room at 4:30 a.m. for a couple of beers and more talk about Ohio, the vote data, and past races won and lost.
It was Cahill who shared the worst news, the most decisively bad numbers for the Democrats, to the nominee, who was working off of five hours sleep after waking at 7 a.m.
According to Cahill, the uncounted Ohio ballots, on which Kerry's fortunes depended, were not overwhelmingly from Democratic-rich counties and cities in Ohio, but rather dispersed relatively evenly across the state -- meaning a share of votes for Bush as well. And while a team of lawyers pressed to go to court on Ohio at 8 a.m. to challenge the state's vote-counting procedures, Cahill said, Kerry did not see the point.
''He immediately just decided that in order to go forward in a time of war, [an election lawsuit] was not something that he wanted to put the country through," Cahill said.
After 12 hours of hard decision-making, the remaining choices for campaign officials were of the mundane, bittersweet variety: When to fly home, how soon vacations could be booked, whether to stay in Boston for a palliative night of drinking, and where to find the strength to deal with the sadness and imagine an immediate future that did not involve 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.
