Except For Bennett, An Unsurprising Vote

It was an election full of firsts.

The first Democratic President to be re-elected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The first time in 68 years Republicans had kept control of Congress for more than one term.

The first woman to represent Long Island in Congress.

The first vote on Peconic County, which passed like thunder.

The first Election Night in East Hampton in 14 years without Tony Bullock on the ballot or the premises.

And the first Democratic Town Trustee since Tom Lester.

Bennett Surprises

Harold Bennett of Three Mile Harbor Road, East Hampton, had held out small hope of taking the one vacant spot on the nine-seat Board of Trustees. No Democrat has, not since the late Mr. Lester served as a one-man minority in 1992 and '93.

Mr. Bennett, who lost in his first try last year, had made plans to spend the winter in Florida.

He didn't even bother going on Election Night to the Laundry, the East Hampton Village bistro where the Town Democratic Committee was glumly eating hors d'oeuvres and watching returns on the television over the bar.

When it became clear that the Democrat was polling well against an Independence Party candidate, Stuart B. Vorpahl Jr., and the Republican candidate, Gregg de Waal, the Democrats went looking for their man. They found him at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

Victory Speech

Councilman Peter Hammerle predicted that when he did show up, the taciturn lobsterman would make the shortest victory speech in history.

It may well have been.

"If you're lucky, shit'll do for brains. If you're not lucky, you have to be one smart son-of-a-bitch. Thank you," declared Mr. Bennett, sometime around 11:30.

He later said he wasn't at all concerned about getting along with the eight Republican Trustees. "I'll get under their skin. They won't get under mine," he said.

In an unexpectedly large turnout, almost 70 percent of East Hampton's 13,698 registered voters pulled a lever in the Presidential race. That was substantially higher than the national showing, just over 49 percent of eligible voters.

Of the 9,555 who voted here, 5,344 were for keeping Bill Clinton in the Oval Office, or 55.9 percent. Nationwide, Mr. Clinton's tally hovered around 50 percent as of late yesterday, with Ross Perot drawing off 8 percent of the total.

Firsts aside, Tuesday was also a night for standing still. The incumbents kept their jobs and the G.O.P. maintained control of Congress and of the New York State Senate.

Incumbents Returned

U.S. Representative Michael P. Forb es will return to Capitol Hill, though by a significantly slim margin of 10 percent.

His fellow Republicans, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., will go back to their offices in Albany with far more comfortable spreads of 41 and 31 percent respectively.

Though Republicans outnumber Democrats in East Hampton Town by more than 500, they appear to have been unenthusiastic about their Presidential candidate. Only 2,910 voters pulled the lever for Bob Dole. There are 4,921 registered Republicans in East Hampton Town.

Ross Perot was the choice of 1,026 voters, just over 10 percent.

Mary Ella Reutershan, a former Councilwoman and longtime Democratic activist, was one of those who stopped by the Laundry. She introduced a few acquaintances to each other, hugged some friends, and sighed with satisfaction at the news that Carolyn McCarthy would be the first woman sent to Congress by Long Island voters.

Mrs. McCarthy, a nurse from Garden City, took on the National Rifle Association and the Republican-Conservative incumbent, Dan Frisa, after her husband was murdered and her son wounded in the Long Island Rail Road massacre.

Her victory "must make every woman feel happy," smiled Mrs. Reutershan, who slipped out quietly soon after the results from the Fourth Congressional District in Nassau came over.

Grossman Loses

So did Stephen A. Grossman, a Sag Harbor lawyer who was again defeated in his quest for a seat on the bench. Mr. Grossman, who this time went after a County Court judgeship, came in fourth in a field of five.

The Republican-Conservative candidates, Ralph T. Gazzillo and Louis J. Ohlig, will take the two seats.

There was cheering at the Grill, a tavern nearby on Newtown Lane owned by a Republican committeeman, when the results came in for Congressman Forbes.

The incumbent overcame questions about honesty and performance raised by his Democratic challenger, Nora Bredes, in the last few weeks to win a second term. Mr. Forbes got 55 percent of the votes cast in the First Congressional District, 113,330 altogether.

Bredes Defeated

Across the district, comprising the five East End towns and parts of Brookhaven and Smithtown, Ms. Bredes took 92,767 votes, or 45 percent. As of yesterday afternoon, the County Board of Elections did not have figures for Lorna Salzman, who declared herself a write-in candidate just last month.

She and the Peconic Greens, an offshoot of Ralph Nader's national Green Party, withheld their endorsement of Ms. Bredes after the Democrat declined to support a shutdown of the nuclear reactors at Brookhaven National Lab.

Ms. Salzman was not expected to take more than a few hundred votes, though, not enough to give Democrats a scapegoat.

Disappointment over Ms. Bredes's loss was thick as smoke at the Laundry, blotting out any jubilation Democrats may have felt over President Clinton's hands-down win. For two hours after the polls closed, committee members and volunteers were tensely asking each other, over and over, "How's she doing?"

"Where's Tony?"

The second most repeated question: "Where's Tony?"

Standardbearer, jester, and flint and steel of the East Hampton Democrats for a decade, when he served as Supervisor and, before that, as County Legislator and Councilman, Mr. Bullock was on his way to Washington, where he starts work in a week as chief of staff to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Before he left, Mr. Grossman had offered that, if the Democrats took back the Senate, Senator Moynihan would become chairman of the Finance Committee.

"You mean Tony would," said Councilman Hammerle somberly.

Trustee Race

At about 61 percent of those eligible to vote, the balloting for Town Trustee was less than in the Presidential race, translating into 8,392 voters.

Just under 42 percent of them, or 3,511 voters, went for Mr. Bennett, who once told The Star that after retiring from his job as an ironworker in Indiana he had sailed his boat, the Bub Tub, from there back home to Bonac.

Just over 36 percent chose Mr. de Waal, a part-time bayman and fuel-truck driver. He collected 3,053 votes altogether, with 323 of them cast on his Conservative line.

Mr. de Waal spent Election Night at a table in the Grill, fuming still about what he called inaccurate reporting in another local paper on his campaign. He took a wooden stake and a hammer to the editor of that paper last week, and suggested the man drive it into his heart.

Councilman Len Bernard Jr. and Robert Savage, the town attorney, sat together at a table, silently watching the televised returns. Frank Duffy, the Grill owner, held up one end of the bar.

Only Manny Vilar, a committeeman from Montauk, seemed at all chipper and enthusiastic, fussing over the poster boards and markers he would use to mark down the local returns.

A veteran of five non-consecutive terms, Mr. Vorpahl came in third in the Trustee race with a tad under 22 percent, 1,828 votes. He and his "bride," Mary, ate chili and watched the returns at Elaine and Les Jones's house in Amagansett, the informal headquarters of the Town Independence Committee.

Vorpahl's Morning

Mr. Vorpahl talked about having spent more time than he wanted pulling "sputnik," spartina grass, from his nets that morning.

He took defeat in stride, unlike last year when he railed against a write-in campaign that went awry. His younger brother, Gordon, garnered more votes than any other candidate on that ballot.

This year, though, Mr. Vorpahl said only that he planned to "go harass some fish in the morning."