 "Photo: Nathan Brown")
 "Photo: Amy Bench")
Lorenzo Sadun is not your typical politician.
Sadun, a UT math professor who ran for Congress as a Democratic write-in candidate in the 10th District, is a "mathematician, not a politician," said Patti Edelman, Sadun's campaign manager.
Sadun does seem to fit the stereotype of a mathematician. His shiny bald head, oval glasses and oddly-trimmed mustache accentuate his features. He fumbles occasionally while he speaks and looks nervous compared to the polished, white-toothed social butterflies, who most people equate with politicians.
He agrees that he's an unusual person for the job, but after the Texas Legislature passed redistricting last year, creating a new Republican district, Sadun headed the call, simply because he had no Democrat to vote for.
"When no one ran, and I had no Democratic choice of my own, the idea of running went through my head," he said. "But I thought, 'Be serious. You're a math professor, not a political hopeful."
But he ran, even though he didn't stand much of a chance against Republican Michael McCaul, former chief of the terrorism and national security section for the U.S. Attorney's Office. McCaul was so confident of his victory in the heavily Republican district, which stretches from Houston to Austin, that he campaigned less after the primaries, and after February, he didn't even bother updating his Web site.
So when The Austin Chronicle awarded Sadun "Best Fearless Underdog," as part of their "Best of Austin Awards" this October, Sadun said he laughed.
So while he knew his chances were slim, he was still unprepared for the disappointing numbers that came Tuesday. Sadun garnered less than 6 percent, or 13,509 of the votes in his district - much less than even his Libertarian opponent, Robert Fritsche, who was lucky enough to be on the ballot and got 15 percent of the vote.
As Sadun's past eight months on the campaign trail show, it's a hard and long road to reach people when you are not even on the ballot.
But Sadun said there wasn't another way.
"Democrats need to have a choice. Instead of curling up in a ball, someone had to go out to Republican districts and show them the emperor has no clothes," he said.
When Sadun approached others about running, they all declined, and he found himself in a position of either running himself or having to deal with living in a district where he couldn't vote for a Democrat.
When he approached his wife, Anita, she was not amused.
"He came up one night and said 'I need to talk to you,'" Anita said. "I thought, 'Oh no, please don't let it be what I am thinking it is."
It ain't easy on the campaign trail...
Anita and Lorenzo Sadun met at Harvard University through their local Hillel organization. They soon fell in love and married. And about 16 years and three children later, Anita said she had to decide whether or not she was okay with taking on all the family responsibilities while her husband worked and campaigned.
"I won't say we didn't have words a couple of times," she admitted.
Sadun was also upset about the time he missed with his family. Although his children enjoyed sporting 'Sadun for Congress' T-shirts to school, they often complained about not seeing their father.
"It was rough," Anita said. "The kids would complain, 'Where is daddy? When are we going to see him?'"
There was just not enough time in the day to be a professor, a candidate for Congress and a husband and father, Sadun said.
"I had three full-time jobs," he said, "and unfortunately, the one I had to drop for a while was husband and father."
Anita said her first reaction was one of irritation. But she wasn't totally shocked, she said, after watching her husband follow redistricting closely last year and knowing him as well as she does.
"He was a mild-mannered math professor," Anita said. "I did not want to drag the family into something like this. I thought we would be fish out of water, but people were supportive of him, and I was surprised."
A few days before the election, Sadun spoke at a fund-raiser for Greg Hamilton, a fellow Democrat who ran and won the Travis County sheriff's race. Sadun spoke of his support, saying that people he didn't even know came up to him and gave him hugs and thanks for what he was doing.
Hamilton joked about the difficulties of his friend's race.
"[Sadun] always says 'vote straight party Democrat,'" Hamilton said. "But this one is harder. You have to write him in. I just did it today, and I could barely figure it out."
The crowd roared with laughter, but Sadun seemed to realize that the difficulty of getting votes as a write-in candidate is not a joking matter.
Amidst the clamor of politicians working the crowd and attendees munching on chile con queso and catfish, Sadun seemed surprisingly at ease among the socially elite. But he wasn't as comfortable when he gave his short speech.
He addressed the crowd quietly and nervously, and while they began to chatter amongst themselves, Sadun's voice got lost.
He won them back with a catchy phrase he may have come up with on the long car rides through the rural parts of the district between Austin and Houston.
"When it came to redistricting, they gave us the finger," Sadun said to the crowd. "I live in the finger."
That "finger" is the sliver of Austin which was left of the 10th District after redistricting.
... and neither is losing
But at least Sadun's got a sense of humor.
"Mid-August to Nov. 2, is the busiest period of the campaign," he said last week. "My wife has picked up the slack at home. In fact, people think Patti is my wife."
Patti Edelman is not his wife, but his campaign manager. Edelman met Sadun at an Austin synagogue and asked if she could help.
Sadun was wary, he said, because he did not have enough money to pay for a campaign manager, but the high-energy Edelman offered her help for free.
With that, she and Sadun set out on a campaign that would take hours of work.
A rainbow of Sadun campaign signs streaked Interstate Highway 290, and they said they tried to get their word out in every small town that ran through the district: Brenham, Sealy and Katy.
Sadun and Edelman believed they'd reached out to voters in those small towns, but the results proved otherwise.
At the Travis County Democratic election party at the Driskill Hotel on Tuesday, Sadun was already devastated by 9 p.m.
"I find this very disappointing because the basic message was not received," he said. "It got out, but it was not received."
Sadun said he knew it would take a "political miracle" to win the race, but he was hopeful he would get about 30 percent of the votes.
As the results came onto a screen about half the size of a movie theatre screen, Sadun's usually small plastered smile was non-existent.
The large crowd booed and cheered according to the presidential results, but Sadun's face stayed fixed to the screen. The Travis County results were low, and if anything, he'd expected to do well in Travis.
He knew then the final results were going to be bad.
Despite the low figures, he said the numbers would have been different had he been on the ballot. Fritsche, the Libertarian candidate, was the only other ballot alternative.
"For all the virtues of Robert Fritsche, I think people voted just to oppose the Republican," Sadun said.
Post-campaign disorder
Wednesday was not so much a day of rest as of exhaustion, Anita said.
She spent the day running errands while her husband pulled campaign signs down and brought things home from his campaign office. Somewhere in between, Anita found time to make her husband a cake for his birthday, which also fell on Nov. 3, and the family celebrated with a home-cooked dinner.
Dinner was a bit late because Sadun was busy wrapping things up, but the day marked one of the few occasions in the past three months where the entire family was able to eat together.
Sadun says he has no current plans to run for office in the future, to which his wife sounded relieved.
"I just want to concentrate on getting us back into a routine of normal life," she said. "Maybe we can just do normal stuff for a change."
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