'Scozzafava' turns into epithet

Since the GOP nominee dropped out of the race in New York's 23rd Congressional District amid pressure from conservative leaders, Dede Scozzafava has been swept into the national political conversation. (Gary Walts For The Washington Post)

On the evening of Oct. 29, she and her husband drove to Sackets Harbor Brew Pub to watch the pre-taped debate she had just completed. The bartender reluctantly changed the channel on one screen away from the World Series pregame. Her aide rang to say former governor George Pataki, who had encouraged her to run, was going with Hoffman.

The next day, she tried to keep her spirits up at events, but the betrayal by Pataki, who is mulling a Senate run, stung. Around 6 p.m., she and her husband pulled over at a Stewart's convenience store on the rainy drive home from her Watertown campaign office. An aide called with dismal poll numbers. For hours, they sat, with Scozzafava staring at the windshield wipers going back and forth. Her husband counted the people using the convenience store's ATM to pass the time. Mostly, she just cried.

That night at the lake house, sleep wouldn't come, and she leafed through old Newsweeks without processing the words and prayed for perspective. At 7 a.m. on Halloween, her spokesman left her a voice mail: What did she want to do next? She called back hours later on the way to campaign headquarters and told him to draft a statement announcing her withdrawal from the race.

Soon after, triumphant releases rolled out of conservative press offices. Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, immediately transferred the party's financial support over to Hoffman, who placed no condolence call.

"One man who did call me was Bill Owens," she said. "He didn't ask for an endorsement, he just said, 'I hope you're doing okay.' "

Unbeknown to Scozzafava, the kindly gesture was the first salvo in a White House-orchestrated initiative to win her endorsement. "I did speak to her because she's a friend," said June O'Neill, former chairwoman of the New York State Democratic Party, who became the White House's in-district point person. "And she had just made the difficult decision to pull the plug on her own campaign."

According to a White House official with knowledge of the courtship, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned the mission to his political director, Patrick Gaspard, who months earlier floated the idea in the State Assembly of Scozzafava running as a Democrat and now asked allies to console her.

At Gaspard's request, Andrew Cuomo, the state's attorney general, rang her up and told her that he, too, had known the political depths. In 2002, his insurgent primary challenge for governor collapsed, but now, he told her, he was on top again.

"You're probably the next governor," Scozzafava said she told Cuomo.

After she hung up, another incoming call. "It's Chuck Schumer," she mouthed to her husband. They both shrugged. Do the right thing! was the Brooklyn-born senator's message. "She had to be convinced that her endorsement was make or break, and I believed it was," Schumer said.

At 4 p.m., Scozzafava and her husband met with O'Neill and Rep. Steve Israel, a New York Democrat also dispatched by the White House. At Mullin's Family Restaurant, where the menus read, "It's All Good," Scozzafava listened to her onetime rivals for about 15 minutes, as they discussed the precedents for a Republican dropping out of a primary to endorse a Democrat, the risks and the rewards. Israel told her that if she decided to make that move, he would make sure that the local Democratic leaders embraced her.

"We would be delighted to have you," he said, according to the source.