After a hard run, at last it’s truly over

There were no chandeliers or carved marble, no painted ceilings or parquet ballroom floors for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday night.

The New York senator and former first lady addressed her supporters, for perhaps the last time, under exposed air ducts and water pipes in a subterranean cinder block gymnasium.

She struck the determined posture she has made a hallmark of her marathon presidential bid.

But Clinton’s historic quest to become America’s first female president -- once seemingly a campaign of destiny -- is drawing to a close a bit less elegantly.

On her final campaign swing through South Dakota on Monday, Clinton found herself posing for photos with a teacher in Rapid City who confided afterward that she wasn’t sure she would vote for her.

Across the state, before twice losing her voice, she mistakenly thanked the ex-mayor of Yankton who had been recalled by angry voters six months earlier.

At a fairground in Sioux Falls, she rushed past thousands of disappointed supporters locked out of her last rally just minutes after her husband had assured them, “We have love happening here.”

And Tuesday night, Clinton came to the gym at Manhattan’s Baruch College (home to the “Mighty, Mighty Bearcats”), a world away from the Oval Office in Washington that she had fought so hard to occupy.

By then, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination had been effectively over for hours. In Washington, a steady stream of lawmakers on Capitol Hill announced their plans to back Sen. Barack Obama, giving him the crucial superdelegate votes he needed.

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, told supporters in Kenner, La., that Obama would be his challenger in November -- and he tipped his hat to Clinton, to whom he said he owed “a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach.”

Just before Clinton took the stage, one of her biggest backers -- former special counsel to former President Clinton, Lanny J. Davis -- told reporters he was starting an online petition to promote Hillary Clinton for vice president.

But underground in New York, the candidate and her supporters were not ready to go. Hundreds chanted their support and waved their Hillary placards.

The sound system blared Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” and other peppy pop songs from the campaign’s soundtrack. At 8:05 p.m. EDT, the campaign announced that a Democratic National Committee member from Wyoming had announced she was backing Clinton.

And while Obama prepared to address thousands of supporters in Minnesota and claim enough delegates to win the nomination, Clinton seemed unable to abandon her argument that she should have had the prize.

“In the millions of quiet moments, in thousands of places,” she told her fans, “you asked yourself a simple question: Who would be the strongest candidate and the strongest president?”

Clinton provided the answer. She ticked off the states she had won -- including South Dakota on Tuesday night -- and reiterated her much-disputed claim to have been the choice of more voters.

“On election day after election day, you came out in record numbers to cast your ballots,” Clinton said. “Nearly 18 million of you cast your votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history.”

“That’s right!” shouted one fan. “We believe in you, Hillary,” cried another.

Clinton -- who always lingered longer with her crowds and campaigned deeper into the night than any of her competitors -- assured her supporters that she would be with them at least one more day. “None of you is invisible to me,” Clinton told them before asking, perhaps one last time, for their support.

“I want to hear from you,” she said. “Share your thoughts with me and help in any way that you can.”

And then she dived into the crowd alongside her husband to shake more hands and sign more autographs.

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noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.