photo:Wendy Yang /The Charlotte Observer

photo:Erik Perel

It's after nine o'clock on Election Night 2002, and Robin Hayes '67 is holed up in a small conference room on the seventh floor of the Lowe's Motor Speedway clubhouse in Concord, North Carolina. A few close aides are with him. His campaign manager is putting up county-by-county election returns on a white board as they come in over a radio and cell phone.

Chris Kouri M.P.P. '00 is driving along dangerously rainy and foggy Highway 74 from Fayetteville to Charlotte in his well-traveled black Saturn, a caravan of cars behind him carrying campaign workers, friends, and his mom.

The two men are at the end of a short, but intense race to be North Carolina's U.S. Representative from the Eighth Congressional District. The district was redrawn by the state's General Assembly early in 2002, in a bitter, partisan battle that resulted in more Democratic voters. Republican incumbent Hayes, who has represented the district for four years, is facing a stiff challenge from Kouri, a Charlotte attorney in his first political race. The campaign was delayed by the redistricting battle, first in the assembly and then in the courts, and the candidates have had less than two months for this contest. Those two months have boiled down to this moment.

Returns are beginning to air over the radio, and race after race is called. As the miles go by, the governor's race in Florida is announced for Jeb Bush. Incumbents all over North Carolina are holding onto their seats, and Republicans all over the country are doing well. The Associated Press and CNN call the North Carolina U.S. Senate race for Elizabeth Dole, but still the totals are not complete for the Kouri-Hayes contest. The key to the race could be the Charlotte precincts, which are favored to support Kouri and make up a large chunk of the voters in the district.

Kouri keeps driving. Hayes waits.

Sunday, November 3

Fayetteville

Parks Chapel Free Will Baptist Church is one of the largest churches in Fayetteville, with a predominantly black congregation whose energy and emotion fill the sanctuary.

Kouri is part of that congregation today--not for the first time--and during a segment of the service devoted to announcements, just after one of the church elders delivers an impassioned minute of get-out-the-vote remarks, he is asked to speak.

He talks about his mother, a nurse, saying that she has been worried about him during this campaign when it slips into negativity. "She asked me, 'How can you continue?' I tell her, 'Mom, someone has to stand up for what's right,'" he says. "I will stand up for what's right, and I will stand up for you." He outlines priorities he'll have if he's elected, including jobs, prescription-drug coverage, and education, and then the former star quarterback alludes to his football career.

" When I played football, I led calisthenics," he says. "And I was always getting grief from my teammates for being all peppy and enthusiastic, even in practice. But I'd tell 'em--the key to winning a big game is to acknowledge how important it is just to be getting ready for the big game. And today, this Sunday, two days before Election Day, is the day. It's the day to be getting the word out, to tell your neighbor, to make sure people you know are going to go vote."

As Kouri finishes, a father sitting alone with his young son nods his head. "Yes, yes," he says. "Yes."

Monday, November 4

Laurinburg
10:45 a.m.

The Pilkington glass plant is one of Scotland County's largest employers, but has seen its workforce drop from more than a thousand several years ago to right around three hundred today. It's a good backdrop for Kouri's campaign, which has focused on North Carolina jobs lost because of "fast-track" legislation and the movement of American corporations to cheaper foreign locations.

Kouri has been invited to the plant by its union, and he spends a good bit of the morning there, touring the works, talking with employees, listening to their concerns about jobs and imports and the economy. Two steelworkers accompany Kouri back out to the gate, where the security guard notes, impressed, the duration of his stay: "two hours!" The steelworkers are each wearing stickers: "Chris Kouri for Congress" reads one, and "I'm a Steelworker and I Vote." Kouri talks with them for several more minutes, then, after shaking their hands, gets into a car.

First thing, he pulls out his cell phone and begins returning the calls that have come in while he was in the plant. Messages returned, he pulls out a list of numbers of supporters he needs to contact. Some he spoke to in person--brief conversations. For others, he left messages. They all boiled down to the same thought: "Tomorrow is a big day, and I'd appreciate your support."

Hamlet
1:15 p.m.

Downtown Hamlet is quiet on this cool, damp Monday. Hayes is here for lunch with several local Democrats, including Hamlet's mayor, at the Main Street Cafe. There are many more registered Democrats than Republicans in the county, and Hayes hopes that some of them will cross party lines for him.

He might have some luck. Several of his lunch companions are wearing Hayes campaign stickers on their jackets as they eat barbecue alongside him. Though he seems at ease talking to anyone he meets, Hayes does as much listening as he does talking.

After lunch, Hayes walks down the street and visits with more locals. He is dressed conservatively in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, with American flag and 82nd Airborne Corps pins on his jacket lapels. He sticks his head in at an insurance agency, saying hello to the secretaries working there, then meets a three-week-old baby in a gift shop and chats with a few retired men at the Birmingham Rexall drugstore. "You've done a lot for Richmond County," one of the men tells him.

As he sits with these men, retired railroad workers, veterans all, Hayes reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a pocket-sized Bible. His father carried it as a soldier in Europe during World War II, and it emerges from Hayes' pocket often on the campaign trail. He reads aloud a passage by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that is inscribed in the front--a message from the Democratic president to the American GIs fighting abroad.

" As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States," he reads.

" Throughout the centuries men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul."

That was the kind of Democrat Party he grew up believing in, Hayes tells the men. But the Democratic Party has moved away from those Bible-based ideals. And that, Hayes says, is why he's now a Republican.

Albemarle
2:20 p.m.

Former Stanly County commissioner David Morgan, owner of a Ford dealership and staunch Democrat, has been one of Kouri's political mentors over the past eleven months. Running to reclaim his seat on the county commission, Morgan is ready to campaign with Kouri.

The afternoon is brightening. As he climbs into the front seat of Morgan's red pickup, Kouri sheds his jacket. He's dressed for a long day of campaigning and meeting people, wearing a plaid shirt and khakis. Morgan puts the truck in gear and heads out of town, west through Frog Pond and Locust toward a lumberyard and tool-and-die plant where Kouri supporters are waiting.

The two men talk high-school football along the way--Morgan's son is a standout--and then they talk county politics, ticking off the ten counties in the district and trying to figure which way they might go. "Hoke is strong," Kouri says. "Mecklenburg is strong. Scotland is getting stronger all the time. We'll see tomorrow."