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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2000)
Conley sets sights on helping A-Team to victory By Samuel McKewon Senior editor He lost. So just how long do you want the last chapter to be? It’s fade-out time. John Conley heard it from a few directions on just why it happened in the ASUN student elections on March 1. Not greek enough. Didn’t attack enough. Should have exposed Empower presidential candidate Heath Mello. So on. So on. No plays left in Conley’s bag. Except one. Two days after the election, Ccmley expounds on everything - his trick le-down theory, the Daily Nebraskan 'W| influence and the insurgence of A Team, a party sans the comforts of his own party or Empower’s. A party that he fig ures has little chance of victory after Empower nearly won the election outright, j “They’ve got a small chance,” Conlev ' says. “Not much.” He is still stunned by the back-room pleas from Duff executive candidates and Impact’s second vice president, Amy Ellis, whom Conley says was just reacting to the moment. “She saw some sign earlier that day about A Team wanting to blow up the university,” Conley says. But Ellis is still the best candidate for the sec ond vice president job, he says, and Conley fig ures she’s got a good chance of upsetting Empower’s Mike Butterfield, even though she squeaked into the run-off. “Amy knows who to go to for support,” Conley says. “And she knows she can work with either (A-Team president) Joel Schafer or Mr. Mello. Amy can work with anyone.” Conley would rather Ellis work with Schafer. Two days after the election, he says he will pub licly support Schafer in a letter to the Daily Nebraskan. He has told all Impact supporters to do the same. And sure enough, the letter is delivered the A next Monday, two days before the run-off. “Go ahead and read it,” Conley says. Integrity is word No. 26. Honest is Fyr word No. 19. Ethics, No. 28. ^They describe A-Team and Schafer. The letter mentions neither Mello nor Empower. Even at the end, Conley holds back on attacking. The letter runs the next day. ( The day after, A-Team wins. How much did Conley influence the results? Impossible to tell. Conley himself does not know. In the eyes of the Empower party, his influence likely pales in the wake of the Daily Nebraskan. Conley acknowledges the Daily Nebraskan shaped some opinions. More important were the ads A-Team placed in the paper. “So it got people talking,” Conley says, imi tating students who were seeing the ads for the first time. “‘Did you see that Fidel Castro ad? What were those guys thinking?’ “The thing is, it got people thinking.” All combined, the final week saw a 478-vote turnaround. Empower had fewer votes than it did < in the general election. A-Team had 384 more. In i total, A-Team won by a comfortable margin of 224 votes. As for Conley, he will move on, largely unaffect ed. He wants to stay involved with ASUN but not immersed. He says he is done with the residence assistant position. “I said I’d give them two years,” Conley says. “I gave them two years.” He may go to Mexico this summer to fulfill a Spanish requirement to graduate. And next year, he will concentrate on taking classes and, eventually, graduation. The plan is set. Ana ne aoesn t worry too much about how he lost, why he lost. In Conley’s view, not much went wrong with the campaign. “We didn’t fail,” Conley says. “Amy won.” Ellis defeated Butterfield for the second vice president position, which set off more accusa So it got people talking. ‘Did you see that Fidel Castro ad? What were those guys thinking?’ The thing is, it got people thinking. John Conley Impact presidential candidate ions from the Empower party of the Daily Nebraskan’s misappropriation of power. Those accusations continue even now. In the :nd, the election’s results, which surprised nearly jveryone (including the Daily Nebraskan), can not be answered clearly. 1 here are enough factors to spread the wealth around. This series, before it even became an actual series in print, had a life of its own. It proliferated upon itself. Before one word was written, a bitter taste was left in the mouths of some, sweet in others. It becomes a matter of perception. And a matter of the series’ opening quote, deliv ered by Julius Caesar, which cannot fall upon blind eyes, not when one looks back through the entire process, which doesn’t stop, even after the election ends. men wnnngiy Deneve. What they wish. What. They. Wish. And that, as John Conley once said, is the breakdown. Campaign ends in flurry of emotion for Empower EMPOWER from page 1_ jaded— I knew some things I should n’t have found out about their party dealing with me and whatnot. “It was an interesting moment, to say the least.” He said back at the senate meeting Jaron Luttich, Impact campaign advis er, snickered that Melk> lost. But Mello avoided being mad. Instead, after being told the results, he told JCippenbrock to have Rometo and Butterfield, who were at the bar, called. Though he wanted to be the one who told them, he wouldn’t get to the bar until 11 p.m. *** Mello arrives at Mainstreet, where the rest of It made me feel good about myself knowing I didn’t do anything irate or do anything that went against certain parties or certain people.” Heath Mello Empower presidential candidate party nas garnered tor the second week. But rather than a celebration, there’s a blanket of solemnity. Party supporters -,most of therp in blue and orange Empower T-shirts =- sit around circle tables on the main floor of the bar. All in all, no one knows for sure what to say. After hugging his girlfriend, who was in tears earlier, and a few others, Mello makes his way to the stairs at the back and side of the main floor bar area. As I’m waiting to hear what he’ll say, I hear talk at a table near me criti cizing the Daily Nebraskan. It would be a common theme that night. Mello makes a few comments, basically telling his supporters thanks. Earlier, Rometo and Butterfield made the announcement Empower lost, and as their final words trailed off: “Good luck next year; I’m proud of you,” the lyrics of a Billy Joel song come over the speaker system: “... can you play me a memory? I’m not really sure how it goes... But it’s sad and it’s sweet, and I knew it complete ...” Before Mello would show it, Butterfield made it clear he was, at least for that night, blabing his party’s defeat on the Daily Nebraskan. At one point, as two reporters and two pho tographers sat on a bench on the left wall of the bar, approximately in the middle, Butterfield stood at an angle 4bout 10 feet away. His months of campaigning, money spent and dedication to the campaign was that night, seemingly all for naught. His actions went con trary to his normal calm demeanor that night. “Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck the DN. Put that in there. Fuck the DN - really ...” Later: “That’s the beer talking.” Soon after, he walks away and spills some of his beer on his shoes. Later on, he came over to my and another reporter’s table to ash his cigar into our ashtray, blow some smoke and swear a few more times. All the while, Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” would blare, the first fast song of the night. Rometo was less visibly upset, even smiling as I visitea witn ner later on. bne com mented briefly, saying “Well, it was a good experience - an expensive one, but a good experience.” Then, Dave Saylors, an Empower supporter, who was sitting with Rometo, compared the race to “Star Wars,” saying Empower was the empire and everyone else the rebels. The goal: to quash the empire. Nothing else mattered. Closer to-midnight, about 30 min utes after he arrived, Mello sits down and takes questions from a reporter in a booth. He lights a cigarette and answers, most ot his replies pretty short. He didn’t really have much "^^B to say, he said. ^ “It hasn’t sunk in yet that I lost,” he says. He wouldn’t com ment much on the Daily Nebraskan’s effect on the cam- i paign, rnougn mucn oi me pre vious weeks and weeks to come were full of criticism. But he hadn’t had much time to get his thoughts together. In the next cou ple days, he said, he would. Instead, lie talks about how, at this university, experience counts for noth-, ing. Don’t get involved, he says, because it won’t get you anywhere. “Students don’t care,” he says, sounding helpless, all the while bid ding farewell to people as they walked by our booth. His face, to them, not downtrodden. He seemed rather thankful for the people that surround ed him. It didn’t give him much time or space to realize his loss. But that was it. Unlike the last election day, Mello and his party members didn’t head to the A-Team get-together at Crane River to say good race. Nor did they call. Mostly, they hung out at the bar. In fact, not much else was said that night. Not to me. Not to anyone. *** It was the Daily Nebraskan that may have led ultimately to the demise of the Empower party, Mello said. Mello was upset about the paper to the extent that he would contemplate with Kidd making a motion to strike the paper’s funds it receives from stu dent fees. But Mello said that night he hadn’t known if he won or lost. So he didn’t know if the publicity he received affected the election. Instead, he elected to abstain from the vote on Daily Nebraskan student-fee appropriations. The three things in the newspaper he was most upset about included the editorial supporting A-Team, Neal Obermeyer’s cartoons and an article that ran the day of the election about a radio show people are still talking about. *** About 1:30 a.m., early the Tuesday before the run-off, Mello stands out side the Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority house, two women from the sorority A with him, as he takes another puff off his cigarette. Meuo was wanmg ior ms run r ning mates, Rometo ^and Butterfield, to return from Avery Hall, where they were visiting with l Joel Schafer, A-Team presi i dential candidate. 1 Two things were at issue mai nigm: wny mu Rometo call into a KRNU radio show pretending to be “Lindsay” from Neihardt to ask Mello a question? And, was Mello drunk on the air? Later, Butterfield tells me Mello had maybe six drinks - Mello had told Butterfield he was stressed out. But, in reality, no one-kftows for sure. Mello said h&had a few drinks with supper. But nrniors still flew; Mello said he’s even heard about it in his hometown. When Rometo called, Butterfield said, Mello was rambling on a ques tion the three had practiced before hand. Rometo was trying to get him back on track. And because Rometo called Mello, she decided she had to call Schafer, who was on the show after Mello, and ask him the same question. Riley Peterson, Schafer’s first vice presidential candidate, recognized Rometo’s voice and called and told Scharer. Scharer called Rometo on it. ^^B Rometo said she was embar rassed. As Empower members and even A-Team members would say later on, no one did anything t morally wrong - it was just a politically dumb move - a knee-jerk reaction of sorts. But the newspaper still reported on it, and the story ran the day of the run-off. That night, things came to a head, and the three realized they just wanted everything to be over. A-Team mem bers would agree. The Empower can didates lamented their decision to be in a run-off debate the coming evening. I really don’t want to do this debate, Mello says. Rometo and Butterfield echo his thoughts. I just want to get this election over with, Mello says. *** * The Thursday after the election was amazing. It really was, Mello says. “I’ve never had so many people come up to me and say, ‘It’s going to be all right,”’ Mello said. “‘Everything happens for a reason.’ I swear I’ve heard that like a thousand times.” Mello took time over spring break, which was that next week, to think, he said. He came to realization that his involvement with ASUN had come to an end. “I really feel I’d be intruding if I applied for a significant position. Because you know I still feel my expertise is above and beyond anyone in ASUN, in this upcoming senate?’ Mello said. “There’s not really a position that strikes my chord. I said I’d help (Schafer) out... There’s a reason why I ran for president... “The people that will apply, I think, will do a great job.” Over break, he did a lot of reading on state and national political cam paigns. He watched movies like “Bulworth” and “The War Room,” a documentary on Clinton and Gore’s campaign staff. “It helped me get my mind off of ASUN and the university,” Mello said. Based off of his reading and viewing, he said he looked at what Empower did wrong during its campaign. When he came back the week k after, he said, he contemplated running for office in student organizations he’s still involved in. He decided not to. “I just don’t think I . have the desire to do a lot of A the stuff I have been doing,” he said. Instead, he will be helping a man from his hometown run tor State Board ot Education. And he will be mulling whether to continue a path toward a teaching career or if he would rather go into politics. Vernon Miller, who ran for the Voice party last year and lost, is one of Mello’s best friends and was his advis er throughout the campaign. “He was preparing me through this whole election to lose,” Mello said. “Just in case. I was very confident through this whole election that we would win.” Mello said Miller told him the Empower name is going to be attached to him for as long as he’s at the univer sity. He’s probably right. That recognition is sure to fade, though, and just bits and pieces of the election will shine through in stu dents’ minds. Like the radio show, maybe. Like the fact Empower lost to what some considered a rogue party. And that it was one of an unusual number of par ties. And maybe there was some con troversy over something. Likely, little of what the Daily Nebraskan printed will be remem bered, except by those who thought they were affected. *** • There s a lot of things we learned about the campaign process, how $e handle the media. Its probably going to be the biggest thing, especially on our campus... Honestly, it broke us. I’ll be bla tant, it did. Our relationship with you guys killed us. Everyone is talking, that’s the only thing I’ve heard about ... ‘Damn, the Daily Nebraskan really hated you guys, didn’t they? ’You know, I don’t know if they hated us, you know. They didn’t support us... like, I don’t know, the fatality of it all.