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Wednesday, November 06, 2002

By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

In the final hours of an election nobody but he thought he would win, Mike Fisher stood in the draft of the Steel Plaza subway station and held out his arm in hopes of snagging a dozen more voters.

	Mike Fisher, Republican candidate for governor, along with running mate Jane Earll, left, and his wife, Carol, greets supporters last night at the Westin Convention Center Hotel. "We fought a good fight," Fisher said. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

There were the predictable moments when commuters stopped to tell Fisher they could not wait to get home and vote for him. There were, too, the blow-throughs -- too busy or too indifferent or maybe too Democrat to pause other than to look at his outstretched hand with momentary curiosity and plough along.

"I got a wink. Didn't you see the wink?" Fisher asked.

"Hi. I'm Mike Fisher," he said to another. A polite nod followed, but no handshake.

"Another wink," Fisher grinned.

Whether Fisher was seeing winks or joking them was hard to tell. Throughout the day -- throughout much of the campaign -- he did not change expressions. He kept a smile frozen on his face, his eyes fixed forward and sprinted to the end, even with the back of Ed Rendell visible in front of him throughout the run.

The early returns commenced with a wholesale burial in Philadelphia. "They're about what I expected," Fisher said, mixing in with the crowd on the 26th floor at the Westin Convention Center hotel last night. It would still be hours before a concession speech, already written, would have to be delivered.

"What can you say?" asked LeRoy Zimmerman, who preceded Fisher as state attorney general. "When you're a trial lawyer, you prepare and prepare for the case, but you have no way of knowing what the jury's going to do."

The jury had dropped broad hints throughout the preceding months. Various polls had placed Fisher behind by as much as 21 percentage points, so last night came as no surprise.

A campaign that had started in promise, after Fisher effectively body checked potential primary opponents out of the field, ended up suffocated by its own early momentum.

"In retrospect, his having to start from scratch in September left him far behind in name recognition," said Jim Roddey, the Allegheny County chief executive who co-chaired Fisher's campaign.

Members of the news media try to get the sound of Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher pulling levers as he votes in the gymnasium of Boyce Middle School in Upper St. Clair yesterday. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

Roddey said that Ed Rendell's high-profile primary, while expensive, established the former Philadelphia mayor as a name brand among voters and a personality statewide.

"Rendell ran a smart campaign," Roddey said.

By 9:30 last night, the hundred or so people milling in the foyer outside Fisher's hotel suite turned their attention to other races. They were heartened by state Sen. Tim Murphy's apparent victory in a congressional race and paid close attention to a trio of other Pennsylvania congressional races that remained close where the gubernatorial race they had come to celebrate had ended -- at least in their minds -- hours earlier.

Fisher gained statewide prominence in 1986 as running-mate to William Scranton III, and last night his own running-mate, state Sen. Jane Earll of Erie, underwent her own gubernatorial quiz in the hallways outside a ballroom in which the media seemed to rival the Fisher supporters in number.

"I've made no plans after this evening," Earll said in response to one reporter's first question: Would she run for governor?

"I'm not sure what the future holds," Earll said.

Earll's handlers rushed her off the third floor and away from the television lights quickly, already rationing access to a candidate who, in winning circumstances, would likely have been ignored.

The rush would have been to the front of the room-for access to the next governor. Instead, the crowd milled, awaiting a concession speech, while the loudspeaker pumped out canned music: Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffett then, in a moment of foul luck, Elton John singing "Philadelphia Freedom." Someone turned it off in mid-beat.