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  An Eloquent, Graceful Exit
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ContributorCraverguy 
Last EditedCraverguy  May 21, 2008 02:33am
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News DateTuesday, May 20, 2008 07:40:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionAt the bittersweet end of an audacious campaign, Steve Novick gave the most entertaining and uplifting concession speech I've ever heard.

I've been in a lot of hotel ballrooms when pathetic candidates heard the death rattle they so richly deserved, and campaign staff and the obligatory lobbyists, embarrassed to be seen with one another, melted into the nearest bars. That was not the mood at the Benson Tuesday night when Gov. John Kitzhaber introduced Novick, even as the jukebox cranked out, "I Fought the Law and the Law Won."

With 30 of his most fervent supporters, including his parents and girlfriend, on the stage behind him, Novick received an electric ovation, prompting him to quote an ol' Mo Udall line: "If this goes on much longer, I might have to accept the nomination.

"Well, my friends," Novick continued, "we thought we were going to stick it to the man. But in the end, as usual, the man stuck it to us. But for a while there ..."

He was the Democrats' best hope to unseat Sen. Gordon Smith in the general election, and in the end, it took hundreds of thousands of national Democratic Party dollars to turn the tide of the primary toward his opponent, the lifeless Jeff Merkley. "The last days of the campaign reminded me of nothing so much as the last scene of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'" Novick said. "A couple of outlaws against the entire Bolivian army. But now we're hearing the endless rattle of gunfire ... and the movie is over."

Novick expressed the hope that his supporters would be proud of being part of a campaign that would "go down in history with the great losers of all time ... like the 1975 Boston Red Sox." Underdog campaigns like his, Novick reminded a room still filled with several hundred supporters, are "a self-selective community. You didn't join this campaign out of resignation, because it was what you had to do."
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