After about two hours of waiting for SGA run-off election results Tuesday night, Andre Breaux and Elliot Sanchez finally received the outcome: Sanchez received the popular vote. But before he could celebrate a victory, SGA officials had one more piece of news: Sanchez was disqualified.

By default, Breaux won the election, despite Sanchez’s lead of about 75 votes after “a series of complaints” were filed because of his campaign methods. Seven hundred forty-two votes total were cast.

The controversy began Tuesday afternoon when Breaux and Desiree Tirado, SGA commissioner of elections, filed complaints against Sanchez’s campaign methods.

The first complaint filed by Breaux read, “Candidate Sanchez’s campaign was driving a remote control car around campus with one of his signs. This method is not on the list,” of acceptable campaigning methods.

A second complaint filed by Breaux reads, “Candidate Sanchez’s campaign did a fire-eating demonstration in the Peace Quad (Monday). They have also been using gimmicks such as magic tricks and blatant objectification of women through body paint. These are manipulative and unacceptable tactics.”

Both Breaux and Sanchez said the complaint of “objectification of women” was the main reason SGA sanctioned Sanchez.

“The complaint that resulted in sanction was based on girls wearing bikini tops baringtheir midriffs, which in my opinion was blatant use of sex appeal which I didn’t feel was acceptable,” Breaux said Tuesday night.

“We had both men and women in equal numbers … painted on their arms and chest for men, and then on the backs and torsos for women,” Sanchez said. “But the earlier infraction was that was not in the spirit of a Jesuit school.”

Because of the complaints, SGA notified Sanchez at about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday he could not campaign until 6:30 p.m. when polls closed. But when Tirado saw Chelsea Mansulich, a Sanchez campaign staff member, wearing a Sanchez T-shirt and after a stack of handbills wound up in the Danna Center, Tirado filed a complaint that the Sanchez campaign was violating orders to not campaign.

“We told Desiree she was going to change, but apparently just wearing it on the way back to her room was considered active campaigning,” Sanchez said Tuesday night shortly after the decision was made.

The stack of handbills that wound up on a Danna Center table was taken from near Sanchez’s desk in the University Programming Board office, a location he called his campaign headquarters, though he said no one is sure who took them from the office and put them out. “We have no idea who did it, but I’ve talked to my staff and it was definitely nobody affiliated with our campaign.”

The decision to disqualify Sanchez happened in a relatively short time span.

The SGA Court contacted Chris Cameron, SGA adviser, Tuesday night. Cameron said he would let the court make the decision on its own, Sanchez said.

Because the court is the SGA’s only judicial body and because it made a decision, an appeal cannot go through SGA, said Daniel Green, this year’s president.

Since Sanchez cannot appeal to SGA, the next step is to bring the situation to Marcia Petty, vice president for student affairs. Petty could not be reached by SGA Tuesday night.

Tomorrow Petty will receive an official summary from SGA and meet with Green for their weekly meeting. Sanchez said he will also try to meet with her to discuss the matter. “Hopefully she will see how unreasonable the situation is and decide to step in and prevent the court from overturning the students’ (votes).”

Breaux said from what he can tell, the decision is a done deal. “It seems like everything was rationally handled,” he said. “I don’t see where justification for a challenge would be.” The court, he said, made the right decision.

The unexpected outcome left Breaux with mixed emotions shortly after the announcement.

“It’s hard to describe how I feel,” Breaux said. “I’m happy about being named winner but not about how it happened. I feel the right decision was made and that I ran the best campaign I could run with intentions and sincerity.”

Green said he was a bit overwhelmed at the circumstances of the night, saying it was unprecedented in his time at Loyola as far as he knows. Having been in a situation where he had to wait to hear final election results, he said he can empathize with both the candidates’ uncertainties.

“I feel for both of them,” he said. “I know how I felt waiting for the results,” he said, referring to the SGA presidential election last spring in which the court verified the result in about an hour and a half.

When everything settles down, Green said, he hopes the university can move forward. “I hope the university can stand behind that individual,” whoever it may be, he said.

Daniel Monteverde can be reached at [email protected] Templeton can be reached at [email protected] reporting by Lizzie Ford-Madrid.