During the Riyadh campaign, Salman Awdah, a dissident cleric who was jailed in the mid-1990s for anti-government preaching and who has sometimes aligned himself with Osama bin Laden's causes, spoke on behalf of Quayid and other eventual winners. Yet the victorious candidates have limited political track records as individuals and now speak of compromise and moderation.
Businessmen, landlords and other urbanized candidates with strong personal ties to the West fared poorly in the Riyadh vote, as did tribal sheiks who failed to settle on leading candidates and suffered from a ban on voting by soldiers, many of whom belong to major tribes. Some losing candidates filed formal complaints, arguing that the winners had banded together in violation of the kingdom's rules against formal political parties or slates. The complaints are still under investigation by the government.
The winners and their supporters, fearing a backlash, have emphasized an inclusive outlook and a willingness to share power with losing factions.
Mohsen Awajy, a lawyer and Islamic activist who was jailed during the 1990s and now mediates between the government and militant Islamic groups, said he feared that the strong showing in Riyadh by candidates with religious credentials would "make the government more cautious" about expanding reforms. "I'm not happy with this result, even though I wanted it," he said.
More varied victors may emerge as the elections expand in coming weeks from conservative Riyadh to the eastern oil-producing areas, where a large Shiite Muslim minority has embraced the elections, and to Jiddah, a bastion of international business and cultural diversity.
Some independent researchers and diplomats tracking the campaign describe the winning candidates and their supporters in Riyadh as center-right, strongly religious in their orientation but devoted to peaceful social and civic activism -- a loyal opposition to the royal family, even if strongly anti-American.
Amid anxiety about a surge for political Islam, the elections have nonetheless pulled disparate reform groups into common support for the process of voting, and for the prospect of more transparent local government, a score of participants from varied political groupings said in interviews in Riyadh and Jiddah.
When Quayid answered questions from the Jiddah activists in his late-night seminar -- a freewheeling discussion he permitted a reporter to hear on condition that the details not be disclosed -- he readily shared tactics with an audience that dissented from some of his political views. Participants in other such informal meetings across the city described a similar mood.
During his Riyadh campaign, Quayid said, voters often asked why he wanted to be on a municipal council that was nothing but "a decoration" put up under "American pressure."
His answer: "When I ran in the first place, I did not look at the authority of the council. . . . I thought about a constitutional institution that is elected for the first time in Saudi Arabia, in my age. I thought I wanted to be part of this process."
