By 9:50, when Booker's closest campaign advisors began trickling into the parking lot next to the Brasilia, it was clear there would be no victory celebration. One woman, bleary-eyed and unsteady on her feet, warned friends not to hug her lest she break down crying. The men and women who had given up jobs on Wall Street, who had moved from California, who had taken time off from their Silicon Alley gigs to go door-to-door for Booker began getting good and trashed.

At 10:15, the sound system faded out of James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" and into a hoary old Survivor tune, "Eye of the Tiger." Booker, looking beatific, surged to the front pushed by a group of grown men, many with tears staining their cheeks. As he reached the stage, a smile burned on his face.

"Tonight there are two victory parties going on in Newark," Booker yelled to the crowd. His voice featured the same level of ardor and conviction it showed during his stump speeches. "When I finish this speech I am going to call Sharpe James and concede the election. I will pledge to work with Sharpe James over the next four years to fight for all the things we've been fighting for over the last six months." In the end, with 99 percent of the city's precincts reporting, Booker trailed by nearly 4,000 votes.

At this point, a man, swaying perilously near a pool of vomit, yelled, "We'll be back!"

"We don't even need to say we'll be back because we're never going anywhere," Booker responded. "My friends, we said that during the campaign that we have challenges in the city of Newark. We have before us a battle still. We lost one skirmish tonight? But the fight starts right now for the potential for the great city of Newark. I have yet to begin to start to fight for our people, so I say batten down the hatches. Cory Booker is not going away."

Booker, speaking as always without notes, was shouting himself hoarse, and the sound system was reverberating with feedback from his screams. Booker looked calm and focused, as did his parents, who made their way through the crowd thanking supporters. "This is just a beginning," his mom said. "There's a lot of work to be done."

Some of his supporters were not so sure. Cynthia Tronco, who moved to Newark in 1991, could barely speak. "I'm depressed to the point where I'm calling real estate agents to sell my home," she said, tears streaming down her face. "My outlook for the future is poor. People here expect nothing and so when they get nothing they aren't disappointed. People here have been pushed down for so long they almost feel like they don't deserve any better."

An hour later, on a train back to Manhattan, Karlla Welch, a 29-year-old geneticist, was less pessimistic. Welch lives in Queens; she had woken up at 5:15 that morning to spend the day volunteering in Newark. "I'm surprised he didn't win," Welch said at the beginning of an hour-plus trip home. "And obviously I'm disappointed. But it's hardly the end of Cory Booker. He'll continue to fight. And I'll probably stay involved too. I really enjoyed being a part of a campaign that was so fundamentally significant. I really liked the energy."

A couple of seats away, Jamie Rosen, a 31-year old Internet entrepreneur, agreed. "It was awesome seeing how politicized the city was," he said. And indeed, voter turnout was unusually high for Newark Tuesday. "The signs, the SUVs with speakers. It's hard not to look at that as a good thing."

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