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"    QUEENS, N.Y. \u2014 At the very tip of the Far Rockaway peninsula, right across from Coney Island with a spectacular view of Manhattan, the small working-class cooperative of Breezy Point is one of the coastal communities in New York City hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy. One-hundred and thirty-one houses burned down to the ground, and most of the others flooded halfway up or knocked right off their foundations. Water rose to shoulder height on the streets. All week, people have been coming back to retrieve what they could and tear down what was destroyed.  Today, they came back to vote. Here&amp;#039;s Tom Dolan, the fire chief, a lean 44-year-old in work pants and a brown jean jacket who runs triathalons and once swam around Manhattan Island. On Monday, I watched him and his brothers rip out his beautiful, waterlogged kitchen while a generator worked to pump six feet of water out of the basement. He&amp;#039;d been there every day since the hurricane hit, when he went from house to house alerting the neighbors who had stayed. As the fire burned closer \u2014 his house is three or four houses west of the burn zone \u2014 he carried an elderly woman named Mrs. Wright through chest-high waters to his own house, where she and her husband rode out the storm. &amp;quot;Your cousin was telling me about your swim around Manhattan,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m starting to doubt your sanity.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You and me both,&amp;quot; he laughed. &amp;quot;But that stuff was easy compared to what we&amp;#039;ve got to do now.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You had most of the sheet-rock out when I left.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We did, we got it all ripped out. But the water keeps coming back underneath, so that&amp;#039;s screwing me up.&amp;quot; Seeing a neighbor, he breaks off. &amp;quot;Hey Angie, how you doing, babe?&amp;quot; Angie is about 90 years old, from the looks of her. She says she got out in time, before the storm. &amp;quot;Next time, take the Wrights with you,&amp;quot; Dolan jokes. Angie&amp;#039;s leading a dog on a leash and holding the arm of a younger man named Joe. He says, &amp;quot;I figured I&amp;#039;d bring her down, she wants to see a happy face.&amp;quot; Angie says she was happy to see everyone in church Sunday. Everybody was there, the first time the whole community got together. &amp;quot;And the dog went to church too. This is how it is at the Breezy Point polling station, which got moved because of the disaster to a church in Roxbury, the next town down the road. All morning people have been coming and lingering, talking to their neighbors, catching up on storm damage and expressions of love and friendship \u2014 a day of hugs and hearty slaps on tired backs. Some grab a few split logs from a pile someone put out to help people who still have working fireplaces. Meanwhile the epic cleanup continues \u2014 all morning, a garbage crew has been clearing away debris from in front of the church. Everyone has a story about where they&amp;#039;re riding out the evacuation until the power gets turned on and the real rebuilding begins \u2014 and there&amp;#039;s no doubt in anybody&amp;#039;s mind the rebuilding will begin. Walk down any street and you&amp;#039;re likely to meet four or five people who are related and another four or five who married boys and girls from a few streets over. And these people have been hardened by disaster before. They lost more people in the 9/11 attacks than almost any other community. Dolan himself spent many months at ground zero as a fireman on the job.  So what brought him down, given all the stuff he has on his mind? &amp;quot;Honestly, most importantly,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;I just like to be part of the whole process. I feel it&amp;#039;s foolish with those people who want to complain but then didn&amp;#039;t even come down and vote, so one day you prioritize that.&amp;quot; When they go, I ask Dolan how he voted. &amp;quot;Uh, today,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;today I went for the change. We got to change.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s a registered independent who voted for Obama last time, even though he was a little suspicious that he was a little young and inexperienced. &amp;quot;We gave the man a shot, he came up with a bunch of different failures, and I&amp;#039;m all in for giving someone else a shot now.&amp;quot; But now Dolan&amp;#039;s got to hustle to the FEMA tent with a buddy, then go cancel his Verizon subscription and write down the serial numbers on his ruined appliances and start working on which schools his four girls are going to attend now that he&amp;#039;s setting up his temporary household in Queens.  A woman walks by saying to her friends, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re staying in New Jersey but we came in to vote \u2014 it&amp;#039;s too big a deal not to.&amp;quot; Fred Gresser came in from Brooklyn to vote, too, even though his basement and first floor and completely waterlogged. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s my duty,&amp;quot; he says solemnly. A retired correction officer who always votes a straight Democrat ticket, he voted for Obama again this year. &amp;quot;We just need somebody right now to keep us together.&amp;quot; And here&amp;#039;s Father John Jack Cullinaine, standing in front of a sign that dedicates the courtyard to him &amp;quot;in loving appreciation of his many years of inspired service and the joy and love he fills our hearts with always.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I voted for Romney,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a radical conservative, so I really feel that the government plans are too much and really don&amp;#039;t help business.&amp;quot; Esilda Bruder was relatively fortunate \u2014 her house just suffered some flooding in the basement. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a woman, I&amp;#039;m a Puerto Rican, I have a young son who is going to be 20 this year.&amp;quot; For her, the important issues were the economy and &amp;quot;the climate, obviously, what&amp;#039;s going to happen with global warming.&amp;quot; She won&amp;#039;t say who she voted for, but she adds another concern that seems to give it away: women&amp;#039;s issues. &amp;quot;I have a daughter, too.&amp;quot; Marie Heffernan, 76, also considers it her duty to vote. Even though her whole first floor was wiped out and she had to come in from her son&amp;#039;s place in Eastchester, where she&amp;#039;s staying. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t like Obama, I don&amp;#039;t think he&amp;#039;s doing enough for the country, I think we need a change, I think we need to get back to our values, I don&amp;#039;t think Obama is doing that.&amp;quot; But like most here, she&amp;#039;s not as angry about it as much of the country seems to be. &amp;quot;I know he had a tough time, I know it was hard, but I think the spending is out of control.&amp;quot; John and Marie Zaremba, 62 and 64 respectively, also voted for Romney. For them, the biggest factor is the economy \u2014 but the most important thing is simply to vote. &amp;quot;We wouldn&amp;#039;t miss it,&amp;quot; says John, a self-employed contractor. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the most important thing we have, the best right we have.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Even our dog voted,&amp;quot; Marie jokes.  Mary Jane Dolan \u2014 no relation to the fire chief \u2014 is 81. Her house was on the bay side, but it still got knocked off its foundation. Voting is her &amp;quot;pleasure and privilege,&amp;quot; she says, but she had other reasons as well.  &amp;quot;You want to know bluntly why I voted? To get that asshole out, that&amp;#039;s why. To get America back to what it&amp;#039;s supposed to be.&amp;quot; But even this, she says cheerfully, smiling on this bright sunny day.  Her son, a salesman who doesn&amp;#039;t want to give her name, says he thinks the Obama administration is \u2014 well, he doesn&amp;#039;t want to say &amp;quot;corrupt,&amp;quot; but definitely not doing their jobs correctly. His mother is less restrained. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s from corrupt Chicago, so...&amp;quot; Still, she&amp;#039;s only semi- enthusiastic about Romney. &amp;quot;&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to say he&amp;#039;s the best, but he&amp;#039;s 100 percent better than what we have.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like they said, we want a change from Bush,&amp;quot; her son says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hope and change. We want a change. Anything we get is better than what we have now.&amp;quot; Oddly enough, like many in this predominantly Irish Catholic community, Mary Jane is a lifelong union member who worked for the Teamsters and finished her career at the Post Office. But familiarity has not made this heart fonder. &amp;quot;In the post office, they work at a snail&amp;#039;s pace and they get top pay. If that&amp;#039;s what the union is, no. Hopefully Romney, if he gets in \u2014 &amp;#039;if&amp;#039; I say because we gotta lot of people that don&amp;#039;t use their brain \u2014 hopefully things will turn back to what they were a little bit. Or this country, we&amp;#039;re going to be a third-world country.&amp;quot; A hundred degrees in the opposite direction are Larry Deemer, 55 and Lou Schiro, 67. They also call themselves lucky because only their basement and first floor got destroyed, along with Lou&amp;#039;s art studio and all their books and home office. But they have a nice two-bedroom in Ozone Park to stay in, and \u2014 Before they can continue, the loving interruptions begin. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so sorry about your house,&amp;quot; one person says. &amp;quot;Good luck,&amp;quot; says another. Five minutes later, they get a chance to say they are passionate Obama supporters. Obama has only had four years, they believe, plus he inherited a huge problem because of eight years of Republican mal-administration, business run amok and no oversight on Wall Street or the banks. But Obama kept the economy from cratering and things are getting better. They&amp;#039;re also alarmed by the martial attitude the Republicans take to Iran. &amp;quot;I worry about a new war,&amp;quot; says Deemer.  Regardless of politics, everyone is happy to see Congressman Bob Turner, whose house survived right next to the burn zone but got flooded badly along with two cars that were completely destroyed by salt water. A gregarious, straight-shooting New Yorker with a down-to-earth style, Turner was a businessman who helped produce the Phil Donahue shows and others, but he ran for Anthony Weiner&amp;#039;s seat on a Republican ticket and scored an upset victory. His focus right now is squarely on Breezy, as everyone calls it. &amp;quot;The most acute and obvious problem is gasoline for the generators and transportation. But this is a tough community, we&amp;#039;re come together, we&amp;#039;re helping one another. You&amp;#039;ve seen it yourself, you&amp;#039;ve been walking around here, we have a self-sufficiency about ourselves. But there are a few things we can&amp;#039;t do for ourselves, and one is get gasoline and get those pumps working.&amp;quot; FEMA is working great, he says. They set up offices to get claims in, they&amp;#039;re working very hard.  A neighbor stops. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry for your loss.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s okay, it&amp;#039;s just stuff.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I just took a lot out of my basement and put it on the curb,&amp;quot; the neighbor says. Turner laughs. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll be going through that later.&amp;quot; His neighbor laughs, too. &amp;quot;There was some good stuff there last week!&amp;quot; Back to the government&amp;#039;s functioning or not functioning, Turner says the first three or four days were the hardest. They were cut off from the Rockaways and people set up their own food kitchen and clothing exchange. Meanwhile, &amp;quot;we had a lot of politicians giving themselves high fives and pats on the back for a job well done. Well, the job really wasn&amp;#039;t done, and now the gas situation is that in triplicate. The gas isn&amp;#039;t here \u2014 it&amp;#039;s arrived on ships, it&amp;#039;s on the tanker trucks, but for some reason it can&amp;#039;t get from the top of the bureaucracy to the bottom. This should be managed from the bottom up.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s talked to everybody trying to get help, Mayor Bloomberg included. &amp;quot;They say, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;ll have this solved by late Saturday, we&amp;#039;ll have it solved by Sunday, we&amp;#039;ll have it solved by Monday.&amp;#039; It doesn&amp;#039;t get done. They don&amp;#039;t have a clue what&amp;#039;s going on on the ground. I suspect there are different problems. For or some it&amp;#039;s electrical and flooding, a generator might solve it, for others it&amp;#039;s getting inspectors there. Get them from Albany if you have to, just get their ass here, period.&amp;quot; And his vote? &amp;quot;I think that&amp;#039;s clear. We have a failed administration, we need to fix it. I&amp;#039;ll be supporting Romney fully.&amp;quot; But a woman named Virginia, who wanted to stay anonymous at the point of her last name, captured the community spirit most succinctly. Her house is still there, so she aslso calls herself fortunate, even though she had four and a half feet of water visit her living room. &amp;quot;But a lot of people don&amp;#039;t have a house to go back to.&amp;quot; And why is it so important to vote that she&amp;#039;d fight the traffic and the gas lines to come back? &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Cause the world goes on, the world goes on. It&amp;#039;s the same reason it&amp;#039;s important my daughter gets back to school. You gotta keep going. It&amp;#039;s all part of the recovery.&amp;quot; ---ELECTION DAY ON THE POLITICS BLOG: LIVE FROM EVERY SWING STATE... \u2022 FLORIDA: Charles P. Pierce with the Voting-Rights Watchdogs \u2022 OHIO: Mark Warren Traveling with Governor John Kasich (and with Romney) \u2022 NEW HAMPSHIRE: Margaret Doris in 5-Vote Territory (and with Romney) \u2022 VIRGINIA: Elizabeth Sile in the Uncertain Suburbs \u2022 NEVADA: Jason Whithed Searching for Sheldon Adelson \u2022 WISCONSIN: Joe Tarr with the Trained Poll-Watchers \u2022 NORTH CAROLINA: Aaron Gwyn on the Independent&amp;#039;s Indecision \u2022 IOWA: Kyle Minor on the Last-Minute Battleground Road Trip \u2022 COLORADO: Sam Levin at the Last Victory Party (and with Obama and Romney) \u2022 ...AND PENNSYLVANIA: Isaiah Thompson on the Blue State That Would Be Red PLUS: Tom Junod in Chicago with Obama, Margaret Doris in Boston with Romney... and  ELECTION NIGHT ON TWITTER: LIVE FROM EVERY ANGLE... \u2022 @ESQPolitics: Charles P. Pierce, Snarking the Results All Night Long \u2022 @StephenMarche: Watching Nothing but Twitter All Night Long \u2022 @Sullduggery: Matt Sullivan, Watching the Pundits on TV All Night Long \u2022 @TomJunod: Inside the Obama &amp;quot;Victory&amp;quot; Party in Chicago All Night Long "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a16622/breezy-point-election-day-2012-14506797/>