Instead, the two Democrats, Carol Berman and Evelyn J. Aquila, abstained from the vote, leaving Republicans without enough votes to uphold their challenges.

"As an individual Denis Dillon has the right to be anti-choice, but he doesn't have the right to use his public office to further that agenda," said Carol Berman, a former state senator and an Aliano campaign coordinator.

He is being helped on a volunteer basis by Carol Berman, the former State Senator, who has a record of major fund raising in the Five Towns area.

In 1986, Carol Berman challenged Skelos in their third consecutive state senate contest.

"We endorsed the Maddux family's and the prosecutors' view of events," said Carol Berman, the president of Regency Television, a fledgling company that took on the film as its first television project.

Mr. Connor, an election lawyer who is an informal adviser to the two Democratic board members, Carol Berman and Evelyn J. Aquila, said they could change their minds at the last moment, but he doubted they would.

The decision came a week after the board's Democratic chairwoman, Carol Berman, recommended that Ms. Kelly's ballot petitions be invalidated because the pages were not numbered.

Politicians have led us into deadlock because they perceive the public to deeply suspect that these crises are nothing more than issues manufactured to advance political careers, as he says Carol Berman did with the SST.

Carol Berman, the Democratic chairwoman of the Board of Elections, denied that her abstention had anything to do with Mrs. Clinton's prospects.

Carol Berman, a former community activist and assemblywoman from Long Island, recalled last week that hard bargaining had set the stage for the Concorde's eventual demise.