Charles J. Fogarty had hoped for a short move in January, up one flight of white marble stairs to the governor's office. His transition will be far more dramatic -- out of the State House in which he has served for 16 years as a legislator and as the state's lieutenant governor, after a 2-point loss to Governor Carcieri on Election Day.

The empty cardboard boxes stacked in his office earlier this week probably will be packed with his photographs and political knickknacks; Fogarty will leave state government, for now.

What comes next, he's not sure. Maybe a job working on public policy. He has always been interested in healthcare issues.

He'll leave office without regret, he says, after falling just short of his goal, and ending election night as the only statewide or national Democratic candidate to lose in Rhode Island. Few had given the genial politician much of a chance to take out Carcieri, and Fogarty came closer than most political watchers had expected, losing by about 8,000 votes out of some 380,000 cast.

He hints strongly that he might run again.

"I wanted the opportunity to lead our state," Fogarty said in an interview. "Just because you don't succeed doesn't mean that desire goes away."

Four years is an eternity in politics, but "nothing that happened in this campaign dampened my enthusiasm for it," he said. "Except for the last few hours, I enjoyed every minute of it."

He laughs loudly, and insists he's disappointed but not devastated over the first election loss of his career.

After representing Glocester and Burrillville in the state Senate for eight years, Fogarty, 51, defeated incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Bernard Jackvony in 1998 and was reelected four years ago.

Yes, this election hurt, but the weeks after the campaign were busy with loose ends, such as readying for the transition to incoming Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts. Fogarty says he does not dwell on his near miss.

Last week, he began job hunting. "I'm talking to a number of folks about things I want to do. I want to stay involved in public service. There are a number of issues I worked on as an elected official that I would like to continue to work on in another capacity."

The 2008 congressional election is probably not for Fogarty. "We have two great congressmen that are my friends and supporters. I don't think they're going anywhere."

His next perfect job "would allow me to have involvement with some aspect of public policy that would make a difference for people of our state, outside of state government."

He says he's better for the experience of a hard-fought campaign. "I clearly have grown as an individual, as an elected official," he said.

He took a long pause.

"Sometimes when you start a campaign, you have that little question about yourself: Am I up to it? At the end I can say, yeah, I was."

From the beginning, the perception was that Fogarty was the underdog. His first internal poll, done in secret last January, pegged his deficit at a shocking 22 points against a governor with a 70-percent favorability rating.

"I knew it would be a challenge, but when we got those first numbers, our mouths fell open," Fogarty admits.

Before the race, most people who watch Rhode Island politics considered Carcieri -- a Republican who defeated Democrat Myrth York by 10 percentage points in 2002 -- extremely hard to beat.

"Our party does not lack ambitious people," Fogarty said, "and the fact that I had no Democratic primary was not because I was perceived as such an overwhelming candidate. It was because a lot of other folks who wanted to be governor decided they'd rather wait for an easier opportunity."

Those up-and-coming Democrats will want their shots at the open governor's seat in 2010, when term-limited Carcieri must leave office. That's fine with Fogarty.

"I was certainly not afraid to challenge a popular incumbent governor who folks thought couldn't be beaten," he said. "I would not be concerned about running for governor in a primary if I felt I had something to give to the people of our state."

Pollster and Channel 12 political analyst Joseph Fleming said Fogarty could remain a legitimate statewide candidate if he keeps his name in the public arena and proves he can raise the money to run.

"Four years from now there will be a Democratic primary, and it will cost a lot more to run for governor," Fleming said. "Can Charlie raise the money? If he can -- and if he can keep his name out there -- he would be a viable candidate."

Fleming believes Fogarty exceeded expectations with help from two factors:

A Democratic wave of anti-Republican voting, as left-leaning voters vented their anger at President Bush on local Republicans.

An exceptional get-out-the-vote operation by Democrats.

The strongest critique of Fogarty's campaign has come from Democrats who complain that he spent too much time and money on TV ads dealing with public corruption and government reform -- considered areas where Carcieri is strong -- and then pivoted too late to kitchen-table issues such as jobs, where Carcieri was more vulnerable to criticism, having fallen short of the job-creation goals he set when he took office.

Fogarty defends the strategy, and claims it was working.

"We just ran out of time a little at the end," he said. "There is an underlying feeling that corruption exists in our state. Unless people have confidence that you'll be strong and stand up to [public corruption], they're not going to tune in to your plan for health care."

In pounding the clean-government issue in paid media, Fogarty tried to remind voters of his own record on reform, to connect with voters and neutralize Carcieri's strength.

In late September, Fogarty's internal polls showed he had pulled even with Carcieri on the corruption issue; the public believed both would be equally strong, he said.

That's when the campaign pivoted, to focus in paid ads on policy contrasts.

On Oct. 24, the national pollster Rasmussen Reports, nearly dead-on accurate this election cycle, measured the Rhode Island electorate at 51 percent for Carcieri and 44 percent for Fogarty. Other polls showed a wider gap. The lieutenant governor closed to 51-49 on Election Day.

"I had always wondered: Is it worse to come close? Or to have your head handed to you?" Fogarty said. "I think it would be much worse to have your head handed to you. Then I think you'd take it personally.

"I can honestly say we did everything we could, we came a lot closer than people thought. Every goal that we set, whether fundraising or something else, we met or exceeded, and the political insiders and the general public saw a different side of me than they had seen before."

The candidate who beat Fogarty is coming off a 2-percentage-point victory and will face an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature that received no signal from the voters to bend to the governor's will.

Fogarty is hesitant to comment on the political fortunes of Carcieri. When pressed, he suggested the governor take a cue from the voters.

"When almost half the people of the state -- even though they liked him -- wanted somebody else to be governor, it should at least cause you to reexamine your policies to see whether or not you might have gotten off base," Fogarty said. "That doesn't mean you have to change your core beliefs or values. But any of us, after any election, need to reexamine what we've done and where we want to go."

Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal yesterday declined to comment on Fogarty's advice.