BY CELESTE KATZ
NY DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Hillary Clinton backers not quick to join Barack Obama campaign

Saturday, June 14th 2008, 7:45 PM

Charles Greinsky is turning his attention to the race for the Congress seat of disgraced Rep. Vito Fossella.

Barbara Layton plans to go to the wire in support of Hillary Clinton

Rosa Nunez-Caamano has thrown her support to John McCain.

She was in it to win it. And they were in it with her.

Now Hillary Clinton and the volunteers who threw their hearts into her campaign face the same question: What next?

Across the city, the foot soldiers in Clinton’s White House fight are breaking ranks in the wake of her campaign’s end.

Some of the party faithful vow to march on - as Clinton requests - in hopes of catapulting Barack Obama to the presidency.

Manhattan lawyer - and profound Clinton admirer - Julissa Reynoso, 33, is joining Team Obama.

“In the days following the end, I was very sad. I wasn’t ready [to] automatically embrace Sen. Obama’s campaign. I had to kind of deal with my grief,” said Reynoso, who maxed out as a contributor, volunteered as a fund-raiser and worked as a phone banker and campaign road warrior.

“Am I running around buying tickets to go to swing states [for Obama]? Not right now - but I will be,” she said. “We’re going to do whatever we can, but I myself have to get to the point where I’m completely impassioned and my head is there.”

Not everyone has got a crush on Obama.

Longtime Clinton fan Charles Greinsky is opting to go local instead: He’s focused on Democratic City Councilman Mike McMahon’s run for the seat being vacated by disgraced Staten Island GOP Rep. Vito Fossella. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to campaign for Obama - and that’s no accident.

The retired Greinsky traveled the country to spread the gospel of Clinton, and performed “extensive outreach in the Jewish community” here.

“I did everything from giving out literature in front of Hispanic evangelical churches in Houston to making phone calls, working the polls, putting in 18-hour days,” he said.

Greinsky, 57, isn’t raring to do the same for the Illinois senator: “He has to convince me why I should work for him.”

Barbara Layton, owner of Clinton hangout Babette’s in East Hampton, couldn’t agree more.

“I think it’s really important that everybody really understands that the campaign is suspended. It’s not ended. So my feeling is we have two months to the convention - and anything is possible,” said Layton, 55.

“Everybody put their personal lives on hold for all of these months, and as long as she was getting up and doing it every day, so were we,” she said. “Texas, New Hampshire, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indianapolis, Ohio…”

Although she’s not ruling out voting for Obama if - IF - he’s the nominee, “I do not feel that Hillary supporters need to make any decisions at this moment. We will continue to be a powerful voice and simultaneously step back a bit and allow things to unfold, leaving space for possibility,” she said. “Not so fast.”

But Rosa Nunez-Caamano of Astoria has already made up her mind: She’s going back out on the trail - for Republican John McCain.

“Our motto: ‘DNC [Democratic National Committee], you stab me in the back and I will go Mac,’” says Nunez-Caamano, 56, a former welfare administrator who immigrated from the Dominican Republic at age 14.

Nunez-Caamano stumped for Clinton in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana and Puerto Rico. Aside from her anger at Democratic officials at their treatment of her senator, she also recalled ugly run-ins with Obama backers.

“Anything you can think of, we were called…I was personally spit on,” she said. “I cannot join someone like that….Besides, I don’t think he has the experience. I don’t think he’s mature enough to run the country.”

But Nunez-Caamano isn’t turning Republican.

“We’re not voting for a party. We are voting for a President,” she said. “We still have a lot to know about [Obama] that we don’t know. I hope we don’t find out too late.”

ckatz@nydailynews.com

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