Eric called me up and told me he wanted me to run for mayor of Boston. I told him to do it, and amazingly, he agreed. I think he just wanted me to suggest him, kind of like a nomination. And since I was interested in politics, even though I had never really tried my hand at it, I agreed to be his campaign manager.

Now the thing about elections is you need a lot of money to WIN, but not a lot of money to RUN. That was the beauty of having a college candidate--Eric was gonna be able to go out on the streets in front of student centers at BU, BC, MIT, Harvard, and just yell about his campaign. We'd send out mass emails, maybe even see if we could raise some cash to get on TV. Students might be willing to contribute if they thought there was someone running who was gonna protect their interests. This country is based on having people protect your interests.

But the best part was that when it came time for the election, we figured that peer pressure would get people out to vote. We were imagining that people would get their friends out to the polls, fraternity brothers urging their houses to vote, dorms rallying entire floors. The ideas we had were fairly solid. So we got to work...