That goal was fine with Obama; his new district offered promising, untapped constituencies for him as he considered his next political move.
As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tries to sell his proposals for closing the city's budget shortfall, it is becoming increasingly clear that two of the most important constituencies for him to persuade have very different, if not opposing, priorities.
Mr. Giuliani, meanwhile, has mentioned the controversy in his campaign literature, and he seized on the issue yesterday to make an appeal to Catholics and cultural conservatives, two vital constituencies for him in his Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What seemed to weigh on him, interviews with dozens of people who have met and spoken to his advisers revealed, was not his status as a carpetbagger who had moved to New York from Tennessee, but rather the reality that there were few easy constituencies for him to grab on to, outside of Wall Street, where he has worked since moving here in 2006.
We endured a largely gag-free introduction thanking his lingerie model girlfriend, Katie Green, and the Conservative voters of his former constituency for enabling him to be there.
He won 113 votes in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, enough for him to come second from bottom, edging out Robin Ellison of the The U niversal) Party.
9.42am: Nick Clegg is getting a hard time now from someone who lives in his constituency and voted for him before but won't support him this time because she thinks he was "hypocritcal" over Michael Martin.
That self-portrait of toughness will go down perfectly, Mr. Obama might hope, in blue-collar constituencies where support for him is in doubt and where a we-will-win vision of America's model for worldwide success is cherished.
It is where Donald Trump's reality-TV persona from "The Apprentice" meets his presidency that he can make the most significant difference for the "left behind" constituencies that voted for him.
