I grew up in a political family – my mom was active in local politics down in Silicon Valley when I was young, so I recall precinct walking, riding in holiday parades, and trying to sit still through the annual State of the City addresses, a tough proposition even when my own mom was doing the speechmaking. I even snuck along to the National Conference of Mayors in DC, where I’m told I met some “big name” mayors from the period. Whether means Chicago or Wasilia, AK (noooooo!), I have no idea. Didn’t mean much to a 10 year old I guess, though I did get some sweet little city-themed lapel pins.

In theory that should have led me towards an active life in politics, but in reality while I’m an avid follower of the political process and vote consistently, I’ve only dipped my toes in electoral waters as a candidate on a few occasions, student elections and such. One was a political drama writ small, and hilarious in hindsight. So what better way to occupy the time stuck on a NYC-bound flight on Election Day 2008 than revisit the scandal that was the “University of Oregon Student Finance Senator Race of 1995”?

It had it all – a last minute filing, dueling constituencies, empty debates, poor voter turnout predictions, playing to the base, a “third party” candidate, a runoff, and yes, even a constitutional challenge (targeting my campaign) based on dubious claims and resolved by an emergency student Consititutional Court (aka “law student resume booster”) session. Oh, and the eventual winner of this hard fought battle (spoiler: not me)? Resigned in an unrelated protest just a few weeks later, leading to an out-of-cycle appointment.

Maybe all this explains why I’ve never put my name on a ballot since?

First off, what the hell is a Student Finance Senator you may ask? Truth be told, a decade+ hasn’t done wonders for my memory about that detail, and I actually doubt most students who did vote had much idea themselves. I *think* it involved being a) a regular member of the broad student senate, which voted on no doubt lofty issues and more importantly controlled the student body budget (beer runs!), and b) being a permanently assigned voting member of the Senate Finance Committee, having disproportionate influence on said budget. So I guess there was some heft to the role.

I got looped into running by the outgoing office holder, a friend of mine who was also president of our fraternity (I was treasurer – see, relevant experience!). He didn’t like who was running to replace him, and hit me up to give it a shot. Problem was, he did that about an hour before the filing deadline. So we filled out the forms and started a mad Prefontaine-like dash across campus to the student government offices, bolting in the door about 30 seconds before they locked them (symbolic and practical way of ensuring no late filings). It was crowded though, so it took a few minutes to get my application in – see the courtroom drama building? Wait for it…

With my at-the-time unchallenged candidacy established, it was time for some grand political strategy. Wait, no, actually it was time to pick a color for my posters and flyers! Neon-green, thanks (future marketer in action – pick the colors to stand out in the mailboxes and poster boards these things were intended to pollute). I quickly allocated the vast majority of my campaign funds – about $50, beer money being scarce at that age – to the critical task of printing and plastering these no-way-I-will-lose-now tools around campus.

That being done, back to strategy. I had two opponents, and we each had our natural constituencies. I represented the “Greek vote” – the fraternities and sororities – and hooked up with an honest-to-God “Greek ticket” to do get-out-the-vote efforts, campaigning, etc. My primary opponent was a dorm resident assistant, so de facto represented the “dorm vote”, i.e. impressionable freshmen for the most part, but handily located in tight quarters with convenient voting locations. Third Party Guy wasn’t really anything of the sort – he just had no constituency, except maybe anyone who dislike the Greeks or freshmen I assume. Maybe the j-school library regulars as well I guess.

Now, I thought my Greek ticket was an advantage – 15% of the student population, clustered in a couple dozen houses where they ALL met every Monday night, with structured leadership to GOTV and a natural us-vs-the rest of campus mentality for motivation to support “their” candidates. If’ you’ve heard the term GDI, you know what that was all about.

Unfortunately I didn’t take into account that frat guys and sorority girls were (at least back then), on the whole, not ones to give much of a damn about campus politics and therefore not likely to actually vote. Oops.

In contrast, Dorm Girl in effect “owned” the dorms, and vastly more critically, dorm mail distribution – getting flyers into every student’s mailbox. While officially neutral, I’m pretty sure those mail room folks were a pissed off lot in general and not so inclined to bend over backwards to help out the opponent of one of their friends. My oh-so-unbeatable flyers, though dropped off properly for distribution, conveniently “got lost”. Twice. Keep in mind this was in the infancy of email (we heavily used PINE, thanks) and Internet (um, none? I think my AOL account over 14.4k baud was “teh cool”) so email blasts and online social networking weren’t exactly options. You basically put up posters, flyers, made campaign talks, etc. and got the word out directly. Old skool as it were.

Further supporting the “dorm wave” going against me, my opponent also had other built in advantages in the dorms: 1) voting booths were set up right outside every cafeteria, and college kids need their food ALL THE TIME, so plenty of reminders and opportunity to vote with ease for her “base” (my “base” actually had to walk around campus to find booths. Hahahaha…); 2) freshmen tend to be more idealistic about these things vs more cynical and knowledgeable upperclassmen who knew that bar time > voting time, any day of the week; 3) access to weekly all-dorm meetings. This, in theory, was offset by my access to the Monday night house dinners, but really, I don’t think those folks paid much attention (note to self – work on speaking skills).

So I had some structural disadvantages, shall we say. But I made those flyers (did I mention they were neon green? You heard me), did the speaking rounds, even attended a largely pointless and sparsely watched debate, no less mandatory despite its irrelevance.

Throughout all this Third Party Guy was out rocking the…wait, I have no idea what he was doing. At a minimum he wasn’t printing kick-ass neon green flyers, thank you very much.

The real fun began however just prior to the election – actually about 48 hours prior. I don’t know if my candidacy or clearly superior campaign skills (neon gr…OK, you get it) spooked my dorm-gifted opponent or what – there was no polling or anything – but all of a sudden I find out she has filed a challenge to my candidacy, saying I hadn’t gotten my application by the deadline. Remember it was a squeaker, but I got in the door, whereas she claimed I was let in by mysterious-yet-sympathetic others.

I’m pretty sure it was ACORN. We were tight back then.

Anyway, this was the high drama portion of my ill-fated campaign. Seriously, the school paper *almost* wrote an article about this travesty of justice. Or so I was told. I actually had to grab representation (frat brother, but I heard he was pre-law) and show up to defend myself lest I get struck from the final ballot. Third Party Guy was there too, backing my opponent.

It was all very Florida 2000, just faster, smaller, hanging chad-less, and totally without significance to the wider world.

The arguments were made, witnesses called, facts presented, etc. Halfway through Third Party Guy withdrew his support from the challenge and apologized to me, as I guess he wasn’t really aware of the actual details of the case. That, more than anything I think, swayed the Courts ruling, and there I was…still on the ballot having survived a constitutional crisis! On my way to electoral dominance!

And then I got pummeled. My voters, well, didn’t. Hers did. Third Party Guy’s really didn’t. However, just to keep the drama going, Dorm Girl didn’t pass 50%, and away we went to a runoff, minus Third Party Guy. I could almost hear the Natty Light keg spinning up for my inevitable victory party.

And I got pummeled again, even worse. And thus ended my college political career, a drubbing in a runoff after surviving a constitutional court challenge. I was crushed. We still had the victory party anyway, and damn right the Greek vote showed up for that.

All this is just to say, Obama, man, I got your back. Spoken from one true veteran of a brutal political campaign to another.

Postscript: A few weeks after taking office, my triumphant opponent didn’t like some bill or something, and resigned the office in protest. Nice.