Councilman James Davis of Brooklyn was a remarkable man, in some ways one of the liveliest and friendliest at City Hall. He had a way in a conversation that was both commanding and warm, and he had a high octane, pressing his issues constantly. And while on substance we differed with him about much, his drive in politics was in some ways one of the most inspiring in the city. In the wake of his killing by an opponent he had tried to befriend, his story will be reflected upon by many.

He was the son of a father who had, himself, given his life to the city, pursuing a long career as a corrections officer, and a mother who was a nurse. In high school, James Davis played football and was a boxer. But his life took a serious turn, and after working in corrections, he eventually joined the New York Police Department, serving some 11 years. He was also ordained as a Christian minister. He was brought to the attention of the Crown Heights neighborhood by his “Stop the Violence” parade, which he held every year, and when he glimpsed the possibilities of politics, he went after public office every year there was a race — in 1996, ’97, ’98, and 2000, before winning a seat in the council in 2001.

His persistence was all the more impressive for the fact that he ran against the Brooklyn machine, taking on Clarence Norman in 1998 and 2000, coming, in 1998, within a few hundred votes of unseating him. He ran against two things — violence and the machine. The Democratic Party organization in Kings County pulled out all the stops to beat him, but he won a narrow victory. He won the support of many reformers in a district that includes Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, and Crown Heights, where he lived about a block from 770 Eastern Parkway.

Davis’ electoral base turned out to be the poorer, Crown Heights side of the district, near Ebbets Field. Initially he did poorly in the middle-class brownstone areas, particularly in Prospect Heights. But once in the council, he began to build bridges in a way that caught our attention and no doubt that of many others. He opposed the tax hike being imposed on property owners by a mayor and fellow council men bent on preserving reckless spending patterns in the face of a historic budget crisis in the city. He also broke with the speaker of the council, Gifford Miller, as the speaker sought to evade term limits that had been imposed in a referendum.

These were no small acts for a freshman in the legislature. They showed a kind of grit that we admired, even if we didn’t agree with all the positions Davis took. Critics scoffed that such dissents enabled him to get into his favorite role, as an attention-grabbing gadfly. But Davis paid a political price, as his City Hall parking permit was pulled — and not renewed -— and he lost a couple of committee memberships. He still chaired the juvenile justice subcommittee of the Public Safety Committee.

How far Davis would have gone in public life, how he would have matured as a politician, whether he would have achieved his goal of becoming mayor, these are questions that can be left only to speculation. A clearly shaken Mayor Bloomberg didn’t always find the right words in the chaos following the killing yesterday, but several times he marked a particularly apt point. He kept talking of how Davis was an “elected official,” and there is something exceptionally horrifying about the slaying of an elected official. For the loss is not of only the individual life, but of the hopes that so many thousands have placed in him. The fact that we will never know how James Davis would have redeemed the bet by so many in Brooklyn leaves all of New York with a sad and hollow feeling that will take a long time to heal.