MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. -- For more than three decades, John Hall has occupied a very specific role in the soft-rock band Orleans: Guitarist, songwriter, and insufferable policy wonk.

THE ORLEANS Congressman-Elect John Hall (left), Lance Hoppen (center) and Larry Hoppen (right).

Hall was the one who, faced with a roomful of fans, would "launch into dissertations about the statistics of how much plutonium was being produced," recalled the band's longtime bass player, Lance Hoppen, 53.

The fans, he added, did not always share Hall's enthusiasm for the minutiae of energy policy. "It was like, 'All right, we get it,' " Hoppen said.

Hall, 58, may have finally found his audience.

He recently spent several days in Washington with the rest of the 2007 freshman class of Congress, learning House protocol. On Nov. 7, he pulled off one of the most dramatic political upsets in the country, defeating Sue Kelly, a six-term Republican incumbent, by 4,300 votes in New York's 19th congressional district.

Hall said he was happy, but "a little daunted by the mess we've been left with," and worried that outgoing Republicans will try to ensure their political legacy with last-minute legislation.

He already has identified one representative who plays the guitar and one who plays the drums, so they are, as he puts it, one bassist short of an act. The freshman class, Hall said, has a lot of new energy.

"It does feel like an insurgency," he said. "In a good way."

Orleans -- the band Hall has played in since 1972 -- enjoyed a brief star turn in 1976, when it recorded a sweetly harmonized hit called "Still the One," which was destined to be a theme song for Burger King and Applebee's.

But Hall was drawn to more serious matters. The son of a Westinghouse engineer and a creative writing professor, he wrote lyrics about the carpet-bombing of Hanoi. When he did interviews, he recalled, "the poor marketing people at the record company would say, 'Can't you talk about the record?' " In his 1979 song "Plutonium Is Forever," he set lyrics about PCBs to a Latin beat.

Many of Hall's central issues -- and many of his allies -- spring from that era. He supports socialized medicine, and a swift withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He has proposed a "Marshall Plan" to develop alternative energy sources and "kick our addiction to oil, coal, and nuclear [power] ."

He got to know his campaign manager, Amy Little, in 1976, when they were protesting the Seabrook , N.H., nuclear facility.

"The fact that John is both antifossil - fuel and antinuclear is kind of old - school, and something I love," said singer-songwriter Dar Williams, who performed with Jackson Browne at a fund-raiser for Hall this summer.

This might not seem like a recipe for winning the 19th district, a swath of lush suburban towns north of New York City where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 18,000. Kelly had won her last two elections with commanding margins: 60 percent in the 2004 and 67 percent in 2002, and started the year with a war chest of $900,000 -- compared with Hall's $57,000.

But this year, every Republican in the area faced long odds because of widespread opposition to the war, said Jay Townsend, Kelly's spokesman. "In a normal year, [Hall] would be adjudged by the people in this district as OK, but too far left," he said. "This was not a normal year."

Hall caught voters' attention with his celebrity, but never seemed to lean on it, said Richard Born, a professor of political science at Vassar College.

"He doesn't come off like Sonny Bono," he said. "There have been a number of examples of people who have celebrity status who exploit the reason for their celebrity to the point where it is cloying. Hall is not cloying."

In Congress, Hall hopes to fight for the protection of intellectual property rights, not just for musicians but also for software engineers and filmmakers. He also hopes to press for campaign finance reform, so that other political outsiders can run for office.

Copyright © 2006 The Boston Globe

###