WASHINGTON – Gary Myrick recalls watching election night returns from a Las Vegas hotel room with U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.

“That was hard, very hard,” said the 37-year-old Guilford native, who watched the defeat of not only Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, but also that of Myrick’s former boss, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

“The election in general was hard. But you have to move forward,” Myrick said.

As it turns out, Daschle’s loss improved Reid’s and Myrick’s political fortunes in the nation’s capital.

Myrick had worked for Reid for two years as his floor counsel, helping to negotiate legislation for the senator on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

When Reid was elected by his fellow Democratic senators to replace Daschle as the party’s new leader in that chamber, he picked Myrick to come along as his deputy chief of staff.

Though second-in-command behind the chief of staff, Myrick is the one who spends the most time with Reid, a constant presence at the senator’s side as the lawmaker discusses policy issues, legislation and procedural strategies with colleagues.

He’s the one, Myrick said, who knows what Reid is doing “hour by hour, day by day.”

Also, since only the leaders of the House and Senate from each party are allowed to bring staff to private meetings with the president, Myrick now will accompany Reid to the White House – as he did on Dec. 6 for a private session with President Bush on Social Security reform.

Myrick’s close relationship with Reid began two years ago when Reid – then minority whip and floor leader – asked him to come on staff as his counsel on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

At the time, Myrick was a member of Daschle’s Senate floor operations, a group of staffers who worked closely with the Senate minority leader’s floor counsel to get Democratic-friendly legislation passed.

Myrick agreed to take the top floor counsel position with Reid, becoming the Nevada senator’s go-to guy – the one in charge of the day-to-day dealings with Republicans over the shape of legislation, when it will come up for a vote and with which amendments.

“For the past two years they’ve worked seamlessly together on the floor,” said Susan McCue, Reid’s chief of staff. “[Reid has] been dependent on Gary as his right-hand man to help him through the many complicated negotiations that take place behind the scenes.”

Myrick stresses that the U.S. Senate is not so different from his hometown of Guilford: Everyone knows everyone else, and a person is judged by the strength of his word.

He also wryly compares the day-to-day legislative battles with Republicans on the Senate floor to the vintage animated cartoon characters Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, who, after trying to outwit each other all day, would stop when the closing whistle blows, wish each other a goodnight as they clock out and go home.

“The relationship we have with the Republican floor staff is just like that,” Myrick said. “They protect their rights, we protect our rights, and fight like hell during the day. As stressful as it is, you get to the end of the day and you still have the relationships because you’ve been honest. And you clock out, and you go home, and you start again the next day.”

Marty Paone, who oversees the Senate Democratic floor staff and used to be Myrick’s boss, said Myrick has risen to the top because of his ability to keep cool under tense situations and to build as well as maintain personal relationships.

“You have to get along,” Paone said. “Your enemy today may be your friend tomorrow.”

The soft-spoken Myrick, who lives in Falls Church, Va., with his wife, Lauren, and their 3-year-old son, Henry, said he was never into college or high school politics when he was growing up in Guilford.

But politics were a constant topic of discussion around the Myrick household when Gary was growing up, according to members of his family.

Gary’s father, the late Warren Myrick, was a library trustee and a member of Guilford’s planning board, and was active with the Piscataquis County Democratic Party. Warren Myrick was “a joiner,” according to Gary’s sister Elizabeth, who also now lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

“If things had been different,” said Gary’s brother, Jeffrey, who lives in Standish, Warren Myrick might have run for the state House. That interest in politics was something Gary and his father shared in particular, the family says.

Gary Myrick abruptly left the University of Maine in January 1989 before his senior spring semester to work in the Maine Legislature as a page. Myrick said the move was more of an effort to bolster his odds of getting into law school than any desire to get involved in politics.

“They’ve always been OK,” he said of his grades, “but they’ve never been stellar. So I knew I had to work hard.”

While in Augusta that winter, he learned about an opportunity to intern the coming fall in Washington, D.C., for one of the nation’s political icons – then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine. He applied and was accepted.

At the end of the internship – which Myrick described as “a three- or four-month job interview” – he came back to the Legislature in January 1990 for another term there while finishing college through an independent study program. His previous “interview” in Washington must have impressed someone, because that spring Myrick was offered a job as a staff assistant in Sen. Mitchell’s office.

Within a few months, Myrick had worked his way into a post working for the majority leader in the Senate cloakroom, where he answered calls from senators and lobbyists about the Senate’s schedule and procedures. It was on-the-job training that would lead to Myrick’s becoming one of the chamber’s experts on legislative and parliamentary procedure.

Myrick “basically grew up in the cloakroom,” said McCue, referring to the lounge area just off the Senate floor. It is here that behind-the-scenes negotiations and lobbying over legislation often take place between senators and their top floor advisers. Other Senate staff members and the media are banned from this area.

“Things that happen in the cloakroom stay in the cloakroom,” Myrick said. “It’s much more relaxed in the cloakroom. Every thing that happens on the floor is public.”

It was while working in the cloakroom as part of Mitchell’s staff that Myrick also got into law school, enrolling in a four-year night program at American University in Washington. It was a degree that Myrick always thought he one day would use back home in Maine – an idea he hasn’t ruled out.

Soon after Mitchell left the Senate in 1995, Myrick graduated from law school. He was promoted to the overall Senate floor staff by Daschle, who later became Senate majority leader. Myrick worked there until he became Reid’s floor counsel two years ago.

Reid, who is credited with being a parliamentary whiz on the floor, defers to Myrick for the credit.

“All the articles that have been written about how much I know about floor procedures, and how I’m a master of the procedures of the Senate – basically I owe all that to Gary,” Reid said. “There isn’t anything that I’ve done that we haven’t worked closely on.”

Asked to name a specific example of where he has had a significant impact, Myrick, like Reid, only points to the overall picture.

“It’s every day,” he said. “It’s impossible for me to take credit for specific achievements.”

As the new Senate minority leader’s deputy chief of staff, Myrick’s duties will include helping manage a larger staff of about 100 people and will involve working more closely on overall political strategy and policy initiatives.

Myrick’s work in Washington also has led to some special perks for his family.

Just a year or two into President Clinton’s second term, Myrick secured a ticket to the Senate gallery for his sister to see Clinton give his State of the Union address.

More recently, he brought his sister and parents to Daschle’s office balcony in the Capitol. Warren Myrick died last year from a neck injury, and the trip down to see his son would be his last. Gary’s mother, Carole, remembers the occasion vividly.

“It was raining, but I didn’t care,” said Carole Myrick, who now also lives near Gary. “It was just wonderful.”

“Coming from Guilford, Maine, that’s a pretty amazing experience,” Elizabeth Myrick said. “That would be an amazing experience for anyone.”