Candidates seek out slam-dunk endorsements

Oprah Winfrey is promoting Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg is backing Hillary Clinton and Heidi Montag from The Hills is supporting John McCain.

But for two of the Student Government Association presidential candidates, celebrity endorsements don't get much bigger than Terrapin men's basketball players Bambale Osby and Greivis Vasquez. The Terps are supporting SGA presidential candidates Jonathan Sachs and Mardy Shualy, respectively.

YouTube videos featuring the high-profile athletes appear on each candidates' website in an effort to boost the hopefuls' own campaigns and raise the visibility of the election as a whole.

According to his website, SGA presidential candidate Dan Leydorf is endorsed by the university cheerleading squad, and members of the team were doing lifts and cartwheels at his bake sale fundraiser yesterday.

Both Sachs and Shualy independently approached Osby and Vasquez in the weeks leading up to the campaign about filming the commercials.

Sachs' ad, a spoof of the GEICO commercials that use celebrities to tell the stories of "real people," shows Sachs and Osby sitting in a South Campus Commons apartment. Sachs makes the typical campaign pitch, followed by Osby who tells voters that Sachs is "the James Gist of getting it done."

"We were looking for something that was going to draw people to our site," Sachs said. "The video with Boom was to get people excited about it, and it worked."

Osby got hooked into appearing in the commercial through a mutual friend who sold him on the idea. One of the Terps' starters this season, Osby said he saw the endorsement as a way to become more involved in campus activities.

"A lot of people don't take this seriously enough. People looking at the ad on the website will probably get more people involved," Osby said. "And hopefully, it will get people more involved in the real election. I don't know the statistics, but people from 18 to 24 don't vote for nothing."

In the HOUSE Party commercial, Shualy tells viewers "I was born to play basketball" before having multiple shots emphatically blocked by Vasquez in a game of one-on-one.

After getting pummeled, Shualy, dressed in a suit, attempts to defend the 6-foot-6 guard. Vasquez drains a jumper over Shualy before dunking on the SGA presidential candidate.

"It was about a week and a half before campaigning," Shualy said about the decision to approach Vasquez. "We were just brainstorming ideas for the video and we were talking about people who would raise the visibility and would be entertaining. Naturally, the idea of a basketball player came up."

Vasquez could not be reached for comment.

Leydorf said the endorsements of Osby and Vasqez didn't phase him, and cited the support of the cheerleaders as indicative of a broader base of popularity among voters.

"I think it's telling that it's a group," Leydorf said. "This is a student group that's supporting me, not a student."

Students displayed mixed reactions to the ads. Those who already planned to vote in the election said their decisions would not be swayed by the support from the athletes.

"I don't think it will influence votes," freshman government and politics major Kaitlin Wetzel said. "I, personally, would not vote for someone just because a celebrity endorses them."

Sophomore biochemistry major Glyn Hinnenkamp echoed Wetzel's point, adding students shouldn't use the athletes' endorsements as a basis for their votes.

"I'd like to think that for the average student voting, the endorsement wouldn't matter," Hinnenkamp said.

But while Wetzel and Hinnenkamp were skeptical of the endorsements' impact, they and other students agreed Osby's endorsement would carry more weight than Vasquez, due to the senior's stature on the campus.

"To be honest, I can't tell you what the president said, but I can tell you exactly what [Osby] said," said junior accounting and finance major Zach Blaine. "Boom's a legend on this campus. Boom's a character."

With voting set to begin this morning, both candidates will soon see what effect, if any, their ads have had on their campaigns. And when the results are announced, the endorsement of either Vasquez or Osby could turn out to be just the assist one of the candidates needed to win.

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