This is the story of Woman vs. Machine over a seat at the table, in the city of diversity.

This is also the story of Brooklyn’s growing immigrant Russian Jewish community and how the Brooklyn Democratic Party has used gerrymandering, throwing candidates off the ballot, and switching polling sites at the last minute to block the empowerment of this vibrant in-grown community.

Inna Kaminsky is a 27-year-old mother of two who jumped into the primary for the Assembly two weeks before the end of petitioning. And she has survived the usual clubhouse tactic of nitpicking the nominating petitions so there would be no election.

Ms. Kaminsky came to New York from Odessa at age 9. She told me she “learned to speak English by watching television.” She went to John Dewey public high school and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and now lives in a housing project.

Hardship has made her tough and street-smart. She campaigns alone on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, without any entourage of blue-suited aides. She has never run for office before. She barely has any money for a mailing. But the machine is running scared.

“I’m running out of anger over our exclusion,” she told me the other night in a Russian cafe on the boardwalk. “Two years ago my grandfather was told, ‘Come back tomorrow,’ by a poll watcher when he tried to vote. He had voted in many other elections. Two years ago the machine moved Russian polling places five blocks into the projects to stop us from voting. There hasn’t been a fair election here in four years.”

Despite this manipulation of democracy, the incumbent, Adele Cohen, won in 2002 by only 100 votes over Susan Lasher, who is not a Russian immigrant.

Last year, the Russian immigrant candidate, Tony Eisenberg, was thrown off the ballot by one of those Brooklyn clubhouse judges. He was mounting a strong campaign in the gerrymandered council district.

There was no cohesive leadership structure or base for fund-raising in Brighton’s Russian neighborhood, although there are 11 Russian-language newspapers that are covering Ms. Kaminsky’s run for inclusion.

There is also a fear of dissident political activity in the DNA of these immigrants, from the memory of their families under Stalin’s purges, pogroms, and secret police. Many of them are not fluent in English.

Nevertheless, Ms. Kaminsky has mobilized 120 volunteers – almost all senior citizens – to pull out her base vote on September 14. About 35% of the potential voters are Russian, mainly seniors living on fixed incomes and starved for city services.

Last week, Ms. Kaminsky met with a group of black ministers in a district that has about 10% black voters. She made a favorable impression by talking about more money for education, safer streets, rights for tenants, and more after-school sports and recreation programs for teenagers.

“I told them exactly what I say in Russian to my own people,” Ms. Kaminsky said. “I talked about unity, coalition, and empowerment.”

In fact, watching Ms. Kaminsky campaign triggers thoughts of blacks trying to register in the South before the Voting Rights Acts was passed in 1965.And of the poor immigrants from Western Europe and Italy 100 years ago trying to get a seat at the table in this city, having to fight against Tammany’s trickery and bossism.

The Brooklyn Democratic machine is still embedded in institutions like the Board of Elections and the courts, even though its two leaders, Clarence Norman and Jeff Feldman, are both under felony indictment – for extorting and coercing judicial candidates in Brooklyn.

What may help Ms. Kaminsky this year is that the entire state Legislature has become the object of ridicule for corruption, indolence, paralysis, and favor-trading. Assemblywoman Adele Cohen is the typical incumbent who goes along with this asylum of dysfunction. Ms. Cohen started out as a reformer, but after losing three campaigns she made her accommodation with Clarence Norman, who is helping her now.

But for the last nine months, both the Daily News and the New York Times have been crusading in editorials against the culture, and way of life, of the Legislature that Ms. Cohen is a symbol for. The News has also been crusading against the Brooklyn machine and its nefarious influence on the judiciary.

If the Times and the News follow the logic of their own editorials, they will endorse Ms. Kaminsky. This would send a real message to Clarence Norman’s Democratic machine and to all the mediocre incumbents who make Albany a place of political pestilence.

Ms. Kaminsky has become the almost accidental personification of reform, empowerment, and fair play for immigrants this summer.

The Democratic organization has been able to get away with gerrymandering the Russian community in half, and with using handpicked clubhouse election inspectors to suppress voting, because the Russian community is not protected by the Voting Rights Act.

Lawyers for the community have tried to convince the Justice Department to give this community Voting Rights coverage – just like blacks, Latins, and Asians – but the appeal has been denied.

Despite all the anti-democratic impediments, it is inevitable the Russian-American community will someday elect one of its own to public office. The Dominican and Asian communities have already elected their own to City Council.

It would be healthy for the city if the first Russian immigrant to win a seat the table was someone as independent as Inna Kaminsky.

The danger is that if the delay is too long, the Democratic machine and the Russian mob will make a deal to elect a Russian they can control.

A dream deferred dies, like a raisin in the sun, for all Americans.