That excitement on the part of Brown’s backers drew Obama to Massachusetts in a last-ditch effort to save Coakley’s candidacy, an effort that failed. Obama matched the fiery antigovernment rhetoric of the most conservative Republicans with some fiery antibusiness rhetoric of his own.

Vernon said there were likely a greater percentage of Democrats among small-business people in Massachusetts than in the nation as a whole. But between independents and Republicans concerned especially about health care, Brown had appeal.

“Small-business owners are energized,” he said. He pointed out that Massachusetts already has its own state universal health care program, and the cost of that program has fallen hard on small businesses. So those business people are leery of seeing the experiment tried on a national scale."

And the passions generated among conservatives nationwide have also played into the race in the Bay State.

“We’ve had some small business owners come in from other states and work on it,” he said. Still Vernon was not getting his hopes up early Tuesday. He’s been watching politics in his state for a long time, and he knows the ability of Democrats to get out the vote.

“I’ve seen this before, and I have great respect for what they can do in their ground game,” he said.

But this time it was turnout among independents that made the most difference in the election. Brown’s strength was in the Boston suburbs, where a majority of voters are independent.

Susan Landibar, president of Tech Networks of Boston and also head of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston, matched the passion of conservatives with her own more progressive passion.

Prior to the election, she sent a note to her 25 employees reminding them of the importance of passing health care reform. And she said she didn’t want to see the Kennedy legacy die and wanted to see the Obama presidency have every chance to succeed.

“My last effort is going to be to send an email seeing if anyone needs to leave early,” to go and vote, she said Tuesday afternoon.

A Coakley loss, she said, would leave her wondering why—whether it was simply because of a flawed candidacy or whether the vote really is a repudiation of the Obama presidency.

As for Vernon, he said the closeness of the election in solidly blue Massachusetts ought to be reason enough for members of both political parties to take notice, but especially those Democrats in swing districts.

“The fact that it’s a close race in Massachusetts should have lessons for people around the country,” he said. “If you’re representing a swing district, I’d think you’d pay close attention to what’s going on here.”