By Elise Foley and Paul TakahashiThe Daily Northwestern

In Tuesday’s ASG presidential race, Jon Webber defeated Julian Hill and narrowly avoided a run-off election, with about 51.3 percent of the vote.

A margin of 209 votes separated the candidates.

Webber received 1,621 of the 3,163 votes in the presidential race. Hill received 1,412 votes – or 44.6 percent of the total. There were 83 abstaining votes. The presidential race was the only contested race in this year’s Associated Student Government elections.

An hour after the polls closed on NU Link, Webber was waiting outside Norris University Center for a phone call from the ASG Election Commission. He was with a crowd of about 20 of his closest supporters when he received the call after 9 p.m.

There was a collective hush among Webber’s friends as they listened in on the call. The first words out of Webber’s mouth were “thank you.” Before he could close his cell phone, the group erupted in ecstatic, congratulatory shouts.

Webber embraced his close friends Tasneem Chithiwala, a Medill senior, and Steve Gorodetskiy, a Weinberg junior.

“It’s been an amazing week,” Webber said. “My brother is coming home from Iraq, I turned 21 yesterday and I’m with my best friends at Northwestern. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

Meanwhile, his opponent Julian Hill, a Weinberg junior, had left his phone with his campaign team while he attended a Community Assistant meeting at about 9 p.m. When the phone rang with the election results, campaign manager and friend Adam Welton took the call.

“I was upset (when I heard the results),” said Welton, a Communication junior. “I just knew I had to tell him. He came to the door and I told him, and right away he said, ‘It’s all good, I’m trying to eat.'”

Hill walked into the room where his campaign managers and supporters were gathered and sat down in silence.

“Sorry y’all,” Hill said. “So goes life.”

Hill said he was glad he heard the news from a friend rather than from the Election Commission.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Hill said. “But I have no regrets.”

Highlights of Hill’s campaign included an online rap video and Welton’s Election Day antics dressed up as Superman.

Hill recorded all his actions in a notebook, which he said he plans to share with other “ASG outsiders” who campaign in the future.

Hill’s campaign involved mobilizing these “outsiders,” said campaign manager Taube Schwartz, a Communication sophomore.

“I know a lot of people voted for the first time this year and voted for Julian,” Schwartz said.

The close election will still send a strong message to ASG, said supporter Sam Schiller, a SESP sophomore.

“It’s clear that ASG needs to change and students need to get more involved,” Schiller said. “I think ASG is going to be improved by (Hill’s campaign).”

Webber also sought to reform ASG. He said he hoped to make ASG “solution- and action-oriented” during his term.

Victory came as a surprise, Webber said.

“I didn’t think either candidate would get the majority,” he said. “I thought there would be a run-off.”

With only three hours of sleep Monday night, Webber began soliciting voters Tuesday morning at The Arch and continued across campus throughout the day. Outgoing ASG president Jay Schumacher, a Communication senior, and former president Patrick Keenan-Devlin, Music ’06 joined the volunteers campaigning for him.

“This was a squeaker,” said Gorodetskiy, who worked extensively on the Webber campaign. “Each night was a roller-coaster ride.”

Reach Elise Foley at [email protected]. Reach Paul Takahashi at [email protected].