Adam Parkhomenko: ‘The mood behind the stage became increasingly grim’

Adam Parkhomenko sat at a table behind the stage at Hillary Clinton’s election night party at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, hovering over Donnie Fowler, the Democratic operative and Silicon Valley CEO. 

Parkhomenko, who had wanted Clinton to be president so badly he helped create the super PAC Ready for Hillary in 2013, was in search of good news. Together with Fowler, they scoured the web to find it. A crowd of aides and allies loomed behind them, also waiting for answers. 

{mosads}Most of the aides who had been wandering around the convention center had found refuge backstage, away from the crowds staring at big screens hoping for a victory. 

“The path kept narrowing and narrowing and narrowing until there wasn’t one,” Parkhomenko recalled. “The mood behind the stage became increasingly grim.” 

But it wasn’t one key state that convinced Parkhomenko it was over. 

Instead, it was one early departure from the event: Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

“I thought it was done when I saw Cecile Richards leave way too early in the evening,” he said. “I’ll never forget her walk out of the building.”