Updated 9:40 p.m.
Mike McGee received a call from Election Commissioner Paul David Shrader at 7:21 p.m. Friday. After hanging up, he broke the silence in the PARC seminar room.
“Oh shit, we won!”
The room burst into screams as McGee and Smithburg’s supporters jumped up and down, hugging each other.
McGee will be the next president of Associated Student Government, winning 60 percent of student votes during Friday’s runoff election.
The Communication junior had won 47.9 percent of votes during Wednesday’s general election, just 33 votes shy of Medill junior Bill Pulte’s 48.6 percent. Rules required the runoff election because no single candidate won a majority of votes. Fellow candidate Luke Adams received 2.1 percent of the vote and did not participate in the runoff.
Out of 4,292 ballots cast in the runoff election, 2,526 were for McGee, while 1,684 went to Pulte. There were 82 abstentions, but the abstentions did not affect percentage counts. In the general election, 4,421 students voted.
Weinberg junior Tommy Smithburg, McGee’s running mate, will become vice president.
“It’s just the beginning,” Smithburg said, adding that he was “stunned” and “proud” of the results.
“When Mike won AVP [Academic Vice President] last year, it was a really happy moment,” said Vikram Karandikar, the outgoing executive vice president and a supporter of McGee. “But this feels so right, so good, such an accomplishment.”
McGee expressed relief and excitement about the news of his election, and particularly stressed the importance of his campaign team in keeping him motivated.
“It’s all about the people,” he said. “They’re the only reason I was able to stay up 22 hours a night, it’s thanks to all these guys and the new people that you meet.”
McGee added that he intended to “hit the ground running” and focus specifically on communication with students.
“It’s probably the first thing that we can do, and it’s probably the easiest thing we can do,” he said. “There are still people who don’t know about ASG, there are still people who don’t know about all the positions, all the committees, so I think that’s what we want to do first.”
When contacted to comment on the results of the election, outgoing ASG president Neal Sales-Griffin said that “we’re in good hands.”
A few minutes after receiving the news that they had lost the race by a margin of 40 percent to 60 percent, Pulte and Dawson shared their reactions in the hallway outside of Pulte’s room in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house.
“It’s very interesting to Pat and I, and I think to the rest of our team, that you can go from being 49-48 one day and then the next day you’re at a 60-40 loss,” Pulte said.
Both Pulte and Dawson declined to speculate on the cause of the shift in votes. Pulte also declined to comment about about Thursday night’s e-mail from Academic Director Muhammad Safdari and did not indicate whether he was satisfied by the ASG Election Commission’s response.
In reflection, Pulte said, “we gave it the best fight we had, I think everybody saw that. Because of the Pulte-Dawson campaign we were able to generate record numbers for this campaign. Again I just think this is a very curious situation, a very mysterious situation.”
Dawson said he was disappointed with the loss, but “glad that Bill and I ran; I think we did a lot. I think we ran a good campaign. I am interested in the fact that there was such a huge drop-off in such a short time.”
Pulte called McGee to congratulate him but reached voicemail and decided not to leave a message. “It was a well-fought race; both campaigns fought very well,” he said. “I hope that Mike and Tommy can really produce things that are really going to affect the lives of daily students; that was my goal.”
In Monday night’s presidential debate, Pulte said he would like to continue serving in ASG if he lost the race, but said Friday night he had not decided in what capacity.
Among some of his friends and campaigners outside the Pike house, Pulte commented on a helicopter flying overhead. “I chose to run because I thought there was a place I could have value.” But at least with his loss, Pulte can “go back to running [his] helicopter business.”
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