Drunken cheers greeted me as I walked up to the front porch of the Stadium Village house.
“Tracy’s here — that means we’re going to win,” said Eric Hanson, last year’s Minnesota Student Association vice president, who now awaited the results of this year’s election.
He surely remembered that last year, the Daily sent its main MSA reporter to cover his election party on the night he and president Helen Phin found out they had won the election. This year, I was the primary MSA reporter. Suddenly I had become a good omen to the campaign team of Jigar Madia and Bridgette Murphy.
They offered me a beer. Thanks a lot. A piece of advice: never tempt a reporter when she’s working. So I pulled up a wobbly chair and took in the atmosphere. People I had been writing about all year long and had seen at MSA forums and other student committees were in front of me drinking and having a good time, except maybe for Jigar. He paced nervously throughout the house taking advice from everybody who felt like giving it to him.
It’s funny; after covering an entire year of MSA forums and events and then three full weeks of campaign hubbub, you start to get a warm feeling for the people you write about. I mean, let’s face it, no matter how little respect the rest of the student body gives our student government, they still have good intentions and heart.
The hours went by and the election results still hadn’t come in. A drunken couple was making out in front of me so I turned away, just in time to see a woman spill some sort of spiked punch all over the carpet.
Still stone sober, I looked at my watch. Almost midnight –where were the results? Probably the only person more ready to get this verdict was Jigar. Even Bridgette seemed calm and relaxed throughout the whole night.
Finally, at about 12:15 a.m. the phone rang and the party grew silent. Jigar and Bridgette, who had taken the phone call in private upstairs now appeared in the stairwell. Their faces couldn’t hide it.
They won and I had to run out of there to write the Daily’s front-page story by the fast-approaching deadline. I gathered a couple of quotes and I then was out of there, leaving the party to the politicians.
I was walking out the door a guy standing in the yard informed me Jigar and Bridgette had just won. “You should write about that,” he advised me. So I did.