With 61.77 percent of the vote, Tucker Fox won the runoff election for Mr. Ole Miss, beating Chancellor Zaugg.
Tucker Fox and his supporters react after Fox is announced Mr. Ole Miss on the Lyceum steps on Thursday. Photo by Marlee Crawford
Fox said the election results meant the Ole Miss campus believed in his campaign, which focused on community and unity.
“What we tried to say for the past few weeks is that we’re all a family. It’s not about any one person. It’s not about me. It’s about this entire place.
“Even though we have our differences, there is unity among division, and that’s what we really tried to say this entire time,” Fox said. “It’s about somebody who can represent everyone’s interest of this entire place that we love so much.”
Fox has been able to demonstrate his love for the Ole Miss community in his roles as an Ole Miss ambassador and an orientation leader.
Senior Karson Nelson served as Fox’s campaign manager.
“It was a lot of hard work because we decided to run this (campaign) a month and a half, maybe two months, ago,” Nelson said. “Coming into it, the one thing we didn’t have was a plan, but because this all came so authentically to Tucker, we kind of just threw it all together really fast.”
Nelson said members of the campaign team worked even harder once they found out Fox had made it to yesterday’s runoff.
“We were just a lot more motivated after we found out we made it to the runoff, because we had no idea that we would be here going into the actual election day on Tuesday,” she said. “After that, we got so much more motivated, and we were ready to just kill it today.”
Nelson said Fox’s personality and authenticity were important parts of his campaign.
“When people would ask about why Tucker should be Mr. Ole Miss, we found we could all give a really real answer about him,” she said. “We could tell them why he should be Mr. Ole Miss, and it wasn’t just because he loves Ole Miss. We all love Ole Miss, and that’s why we’re all here. People could see the realness and the love we have in our friendships with Tucker.”
ASB Attorney General Dillon Pitts said the 2017 personality elections yielded a higher voter turnout than expected.
“We had a great turnout on Tuesday. It was one of the biggest turnouts we could recall,” he said. “Today was also great, with almost 4,000 voters. For a runoff, that’s extraordinary because it’s only two candidates for one race, not three or four candidates in three different races.”
Pitts attributed the higher turnout to several changes made to this year’s election process.
Tucker Fox reacts with his supporters after he is announced Mr. Ole Miss on the Lyceum steps on Thursday. Photo by Marlee Crawford
“We extended the voting period from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. instead of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” he said. “We also added an additional week of campaigning, just to allow the candidates to get out there a little more. Even though student enrollment is lower than years previously, we still had a higher turnout than usual.”
Pitts said personality elections serve as an important facet of student representation at Ole Miss.
“It’s very important to select somebody that truly represents our university,” he said. “You want a great representation for people on campus to vote for, and I think we did a great job getting voter turnout because of our candidates.”
The ASB-sponsored vote to gauge student support of the Landshark as a new mascot is open until 7 p.m. Friday.
