When all the work was over, hours after the ubiquitous pizza had gone cold in local political committee headquarters all across Nassau, the news came as a quick jab, nary a breath behind the words "the polls have just closed in New York."

"Representative Charles Schumer, of Brooklyn, is the projected winner tonight in the race for the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Senator Alfonse D'Amato," the announcer on WCBS News Radio 88 intoned.

"We did it," said George Israel, Vice Chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Committee as he listened to the radio in the Mineola office of Stephen J. Sabbeth, who is both the Nassau County Democratic Chairman and the Democratic Board of Elections commissionor.

"I want to hear the numbers," Sabbeth said, gently quieting a room that was quickly filling with interested parties.

Hours earlier, the Democrats' own exit poll had shown Schumer, a nine-term congressman, defeating the three-term senator 56 percent to 44. Still, the Democratic chairman wanted outside verification of a clear victory before allowing himself a smile.

Finally, after the announcer pronounced Schumer the victor two or three more times, the Democratic chairman, who, like just about everybody else, had expected more of a Republican juggernaut than was developing, brightened.

"This is it," he said at 10 minutes after 9. "It doesn't get any better than this."

Voters across the state went to the polls on Tuesday to choose a U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor, state comptroller, and state attorney general, while local voters also had to decide on a full slate of judgeships, on who would represent them in the state senate and assembly, and, in Hempstead Town, on who would serve as supervisor.

Three months ago, before the fall campaigns had begun in earnest, Sabbeth had predicted that this would likely be a difficult year for Democrats -- and not because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"It's always hard on the Democratic party in off-year elections, our strength, historically, is in presidential election years, when our voters are energized," he said.

"Still, I expect us to hold our own," he continued. "I think Carolyn McCarthy and our other incumbents will do well."

As the polls opened at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Democrats were counting on a strong voter turn-out in Manhattan -- still a stronghold for the party and base for its gubernatorial candidate, City Council Speaker Peter Vallone -- and a somewhat lower turn-out upstate and here on the Island.

It wasn't that the Democrats didn't want people to vote, it's just that in so-called off-year and off-off-year electons, the bulk of voters in Nassau have been the hardcore Republicans pressed to the polls by the legendary Nassau County Republican machine.

The Republicans, of course, were hoping for exactly the opposite, hoping that city Democrats would feel something less than energized facing what many believed would be a landslide victory by Governor George Pataki, and that the committee would be successful in turning out its core vote -- particularly since such popular incumbents as Congresman Peter King, State Senator Michael Balboni, and Assemblypersons Thomas Alfano and Maureen O'Connell were also on the ballot.

(Incidently, while Nassau is a predominently Republican county, with 340,333 registered Republicans to 240,735 Democrats, the balance of electoral power in New York State, which has a total of 10.5 million registered voters, is skewed decidedly the other way, with Democarts holding a five to three registration edge.)

By far the state's most closely watched and costliest race was for the U.S. Senate, in which Nassau favorite son Alfonse D' Amato was pitted against Charles Schumer.

Though D'Amato's three other races for U.S. Senate were contentious battles, this year's race was different on two counts: to begin with, Schumer, who has served as long in congress as D'Amato has in the senate, had an ability to raise money that nearly matched the senator's own.

That's why the race wasn't just the costliest in New York State -- together both camps were estimated to have spent over $35 million -- but perhaps one of the costliest in the entire nation.

Secondly, in the past, the Democrats who ran aginst D'Amato, always did so after a bitter primary battle that left them severely damaged goods.

While there was indeed a Democratic primary this year, in which Schumer faced former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and New York City Public Advocate Mark Green, it never got ugly, meaning Schumer squared off against D'Amato largely unscathed.

With those two factors apparently uppermost in his mind, Senator D'Amato waged what many pundits see as the most negative campaign of his career.

That set the stage for a race that was punch/counter punch all the way to the wire. Every time the senator launched a fusilade against the congressman, Schumer showed that he could go toe-to-toe with the best street fighter in the business, and when D'Amato let slip an ethnic slur, calling his opponent a "putzhead," and then denied it, he played right into the Democrat's hands.

Ironically, though the Nassau Republican Committee did manage to eke out a a 53 to 44 percent victory for D'Amato on his home turf, they also may have hurt him throughout the Metropolitan area because of a gaff on their own part that was widely replayed on network radio.

During a rally a week before the election, while at Levittown Hall in Levittown, D'Amato stood on the stage and assailed his opponent's record. As he did so, several of those in attendance, mostly local Republican committeemen and women, chanted "putz," "putz," "putz."

Those chants were played and replayed by WCBS and other area radio stations the next day.

The other problem for D'Amato was length of incumbency. For every charge he made against Schumer pertaining to everything from his voting record to his attendance record -- Schumer was able to show that the senator had voted and accorded himself in roughly the same way.

"Here's what happened," Steve Sabbeth said, trying to analyze the impact of a complex race just moments after it ended. "D'Amato's loss means that Nassau and Suffolk are no longer the capital of New York State. That's one aspect.

"At the same time, I think it sets the stage for next year [when more local offices will be contested] being a special year for the Democratic Party because this year showed the electorate votes for quality over registration.

"I think what's happened here is that D'Amato simply came up against a Democrat who was not afraid to dish it out," said Democratic sage Gerard Terry.

"If you were to tell someone a couple of months ago that we would win the senate, the state comptroller going away, and be competitive in the attorney general's race, people would've said that was an impossible scenerio, but that's precisely what happened. It's almost unbelievable."

"It's certainly the end of an era," said Carol Berman, the only Democratic woman ever elected to the New York State Senate and now the state board of election's commissioner. "D'Amato, almost from the moment he was elected to the senate, had worked to solidify his power statewide. Now, Chuck Schumer is poised on becoming a force to be reckoned with."

As predicted, the race in the Fourth Congressional District was a far closer affair than the race there two years ago. In fact, when the first returns came in at Adelphi University, where the McCarthy camp was awaiting the results, Becker was actually ahead.

Catapulted into politics by the death of her husband in the Long Island Rail Road Massacre of six years ago, incumbent Democrat Carolyn McCarthy was experiencing for the first time what it's like to run for office as an incumbent politician.

"I feel good," she said when asked about that. "I don't feel encumbered byt hat at all... in fact, I can honestly tell you that I'm proud of the work we've done in the congress over the last two years and I think, by and large, my consituents feel that I've done right by them."

Still almost legendary as she began her bid for a second term -- her triumph borne of tragedy was even made into a televison movie earlier this year-- described her first term as an "eye-opening" experience, during which she learned to be a legislator.

"No question, it was a learning curve," she said, "but I'm proud of the legislation I've had a hand in, particularly and most recently, the Child Safety Protection bill I've proposed and hope to see become law this next session."

But if she was quietly confident on election night, McCarthy was also mindful of the vigorous challenge she had faced from former assemblyman Greg Becker, who had the backing of the formidable Nassau County Republican machine, had money, and had decided to go negative rather than tell voters of his own vision for the future.

"We made a decision early on not to go negative, and I really despise those kinds of campaigns because I believe, strongly, that they are a disservice to the voter," McCarthy said.

"The thing that kills me is, he took facts and absolutely twisted them to fit his claims. The truth is, and I know he knows this, that if he had been in my shoes, he would voted in favor of the same votes he knocked me on."

McCarthy outdistanced Becker with 52 percent of the vote to his 47.

Compared to the ferocity of the U.S. Senate race, Governor George Pataki's bid for re-election was a real sleeper. Most would even say a yawner.

Statewide the Governor out-polled his Democratic challenger, Peter Vallone, 56 percent to 34, with Independence Party candidate Tom Golisano garnering 8 percent of the vote, and former Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey-Ross pulling a meager 2 percent.

Here in Nassau, Pataki's margin was even larger, reaching landslide proportions. With all precincts reporting, Pataki received 67 percent of Nassau's vote, while Vallone garnered 29 percent, Golisano 3, and McCaughey-Rose 1.

So handily was he predicted to win that the governor had swtiched from promoting his own fortunes to working largely Republican areas in the final days of the campaign, encouraging voters to support other members of the Republican ticket.

"The polls mean nothing. What matters is tommorrow," he said on Monday.

On Senator D'Amato's behalf, those efforts obviously failed, as they did for Bruce Blakeman in the state comptroller's race, and, apparently, as they did for Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who, hours after the polls closed, was still locked in a neck-and-neck race against Democrat Elliot Spitzer.

While D'Amato's loss at the polls is the headline story of the election, perhaps more troubling to the Nassau Republican Committe is the humiliation Nassau's Presiding Officer Bruce Blakeman experienced on election night.

Going into the state comptroller's race against the popular incumbent H. Carl McCall, Blakeman was expected to wage an uphill battle. But time and again Blakeman failed to meet the expectations the party had for him.

Early on -- in fact it was one of the reasons he was chosen as the candidate in the first place -- the party believed Blakeman would bring a significant amount of money into the race, drawing on both his family fortune and his connections. That money never materialized.

What's more, the man once viewed as a rising star in Nassau County politics, not only lost the election, but lost on his home turf. Statewide, McCall handily defeated Blakeman 65 percent to 33, while here in Nassau, the McCall edge was 55 percent to 43.

"There's no way Blakeman will lose Nassau," a high-ranking Republican official had said days before the election.

Now that he has, and now that he has in the fahion he has, many of his fellow Republicans are alrady saying he's finished in terms of ever achieving higher office.

And the Democrats are already salivating over next year's local legislative elections. "Without question, we're going after him," said one.

Asked to assess the election as a whole, State Senator Kemp Hannon, who pulled 60 percent of the vote in his own race, admitted that he hadn't even begun to understand the dynamics of what had occurred.

Pulling a list of races from his pocket, he surmised, "that there really were a number of different stories transpiring here.

"On the one hand, I think what you saw was part of the continuing success story involving the changing policy of New York State. George Pataki set the tone for that, focusing on jobs, education and taxes.

"As a result of that, you have an absolute success story in the governor's re-election, as well as the re-election of all the incumbent state senators and assembly people.

"As far as the other story, the D'Amato story. I just don't know what happened. To me it looked like he had done everything he needed to do to win."

Locally, State Senator Michael Balboni garned 58 percent of the vote compared with challenger Jon Brooks' 40 percent, while Assemblyman Thomas Alfano out-polled Democrat Vincent Raimo, 65 percent to 32.

Though obviously thrilled with Congressman Charles Schumer's victory over Alfonse D'Amato, Nassau Democratic Chairman Steve Sabbeth was perhaps equally excited with a victory in the little-watched race for State Supreme Court.

There, Leonard Austin, a perennial Democratic candidate for the judiciary -- the repsected lawyer has run nearly a dozen times -- won by running on the Democratic, Conservative, and Right-to-Life lines.

"With this victory, we effectively broke the back of the one-party judiciary," Sabbeth declared.

"We can make it so that there will never be another Republican judge elected," he said. "But of course, that's a little drastic. I'm not so sure going full tilt the other way is so good either."

Asked how Austin's election had come about, Sabbeth was quick to credit the justice-elect himself, calling him a solid campaigner, but said what really made the difference was the new coalition the party's formed with the Suffolk County Conservative Party.

"No party wins by itself," Sabbeth said. "The Democrats can't win on their own, niether can the Republicans. Suffolk Conservative Chairman Pat Cursio has made a courageous deicsion in joining us and allowing us to join with him. It's a decision with impact that will be felt for years to come."