If Luke Adams won the race tonight, drinks would have been on him at Bat 17, he said.
But when Adams’ phone rang around 10 p.m., the Weinberg junior suspended the plastic, battery-powered bubble gun he was holding. The pastel balloons hanging from the ceiling and the giant papier-mâché dollar sign embossed with “Luke 4 Prez” were momentarily forgotten. Someone turned down the satirical, highly-inappropriate rap music of Adams’s own making. The pizza-munching stopped in the Foster-Walker common room.
The normally exuberant ASG presidential candidate’s face fell when he heard that he had garnered 2 percent of the vote — a smaller percentage than last year. He hung up the phone, and squirted a few bubbles into the air.
“These bubbles are for learning from the past,” he said, dejectedly. Not to say he didn’t have fun though, as he pointed to the dollar sign, still claiming most of the space on the couch.
The phone rang again, and he put his musings on hold. Some guy with a “quacky voice,” he said. Minutes later, another phone call. And then another.
His smile crept back. “I did force a run-off,” he said as he leaned forward, his energy returning. “The bidding starts at two Chili’s dinners.”
The other two candidates were looking for his endorsement, he said.
“You realize this is Ralph Nader,” murmured Weinberg junior Michael Mounier, who attended the election night party, along with Adams’ vice-presidential candidate — Weinberg junior Devon Pratt — campaign manager — McCormick junior Thomas Peterson — and a few others.
A member of the Pulte campaign called first to talk about the endorsement, followed by someone from McGee’s camp and then McGee himself. McGee was “very humble, very diplomatic” on the phone, Adams said, and did not specifically ask for endorsement.
“I’m like a fair maiden waiting for the attention of two lads,” Adams said. His endorsement “depends on how tender the chicken is” at Chili’s, he joked.
Adams said he was “torn” between the candidates, but did note that McGee lived down the hall from him, and comments on his Facebook statuses.
“Now I’ve become a voter,” he said. “Maybe I even have a better perspective.” As he said that, Adams’s song “Yo Nipplez,” from his album available on iTunes, played in the background.
“I thought if I lost, I would just be able to sit around my room and play video games,” he said.
All throughout Adams’ campaign, which included an enormous Homer Simpson chalked on the sidewalk, lugging the papier-mâché dollar sign — which took 20 hours to make — around campus, and an Easter Egg hunt at the Rock, his aim was to mix things up, he said.
“I accomplished my goal,” he said. “Nobody thought this was going happen.”
He headed out to Bat 17 to celebrate, even though the drinks weren’t quite on him.