An Underdog Has His Day
Winning Isn't Everything, Except Maybe in High School

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006

NEW YORK -- Before his musical won three Tony Awards, before Barbra Streisand's people were calling him to write her a song or he was collaborating with the "South Park" boys, Jeff Marx was just another law school grad knocking around Manhattan, wondering what to do with his life.

It felt like the misery of high school all over again. He decided to write the book he wished he'd had, back when he was an unpopular underdog wanting acceptance.

"How to Win a High School Election" came out in 1999, a self-published handbook, in print and online, of strategy and tips, some simple and obvious, some quirky and cunning.

"The candidate who wins is not necessarily the one with the most widespread support, but the one who gets the most people to actually go cast ballots," Marx writes. "It's all about people. It's NOT about being slick and political, kissing babies, and putting up posters: it's about being friendly, being genuine, being confident, and getting people to the polls."

Today, at 36, he lives three blocks from "Avenue Q," the long-running hit musical he co-wrote. It features puppets, resembling the Muppets, who experience the lives of recent graduates encountering post-college angst -- and doing and saying the things twenty-somethings do and say and Muppets emphatically do not do or say. He sports super-frizzy hair that forms a bulb on his head and, on a recent afternoon, wears a T-shirt Samuel L. Jackson might wear if he were a Jewish guy. (The front says, "Shalom," and then uses a bad word.)

But he can't let go of that scrawny 11th-grader he was in his ritzy Florida private school, the kid picked last, who decided to win acceptance through a run for student council. So for the past year, Marx has "spent too much time" working to update "How to Win a High School Election," which has sold more than 15,000 copies. The new version comes out this month. "I feel like I'm giving to the kind of kid I was. The real reason I'm doing this is when I was running for an election, I wanted a book like this," he says in an interview at his favorite diner. "I have some responsibility to put something out there like this that will be helpful."

In Washington, so many -- the lobbyists, consultants, Hill staffers, idealists and realists -- have a hunger for the political game. But remember when elections weren't about the seats needed to win control of the House or the ability to slide in an earmark or hold a committee hearing? Remember when they were about the simple affirmation from your classmates that you were worthy enough to represent them, that they would choose you?

Because even those first elections involve strategy, the book's165 pages of advice are a kind of K Street consulting lite for teen pols. Marx solicited suggestions by perusing the America Online profiles of high school students and e-mailing 15,000 of them.

Tips poured in, and they form the bulk of the book:

· On people: "Go and take the time ahead of elections to get to know people, not just at the last minute. It won't hurt to eat with someone different at lunch or to help out someone you don't know." (Russ, California)

· On posters: "My slogan was 'pick a winner' and I drew pictures of people picking their noses or their 'wedgies.' " (Maggie, Kentucky)

· On speeches: "A guy running for secretary started his speech by announcing that he was dropping out of the race. Then, over the speakers, came a pre-recorded tape of what was supposed to be the voice of God (really, his voice), telling him not to be a fool and to stay in the race. It was really funny and people remembered it and he won." (Laura, California)

· On bribery: "I have one word for you: CANDY! Candy was always the thing that swayed my vote." (Elizabeth, Michigan)

In the updated "How to Win a High School Election," there's a blurb from Marin Cogan of Edinboro, Pa., one of the countless students who have written to Marx over the years to thank him for helping them.

"My name is Marin and I'm a 13 year old student," she wrote. "Today I was announced the new Student Body President of my school. I was the only girl running and my opponents were all well liked and popular. . . . There is a very good chance I never would have won and the book helped. It really did. Pretty cool huh? Well the girl known as Miss President wanted to say thank you for the help."

Now 20 and a student at the University of Pittsburgh, Cogan knows it would not have been the end of the world if she had lost her race at James W. Parker Middle School. But back then, "I thought it was the best day of my young life," she said in an interview. "I told my parents and they came home with flowers for me. It did seem like the biggest thing that had happened to me."

As a boy growing up in South Florida, the son of a dentist and dental hygienist, Marx had a private world where he was a little celebrity. Saturday evenings and Sundays for years, he was one of two boy singers in a local music teacher's No. 1 Bar Mitzvah Band, crooning romantic ballads in his navy-blue three-piece tux. Twelve-year-old girls went crazy for him, and in this small universe, he was a star.

But at Pine Crest, a Fort Lauderdale school with something like 55 teams, he kept this life secret. "Guys usually don't sing and dance and put on shows. The guys all did football and baseball," his mother, Wendy, said.

And there was Marx, the youngest in the class, the least coordinated, the worst at sports. Tired of being a high school nobody and "emotionally devastated," he says, he decided to "make himself wanted."

"How to Win a High School Election" begins with his bid for vice president of student council.

He knew he'd have to use cunning to beat his two opponents, one a popular cheerleader and multiple-term class officer, the other a top student who had been on student council for years. Pizza was the solution.

"I decided that the school rule prohibiting students from ordering pizza deliveries at lunchtime was worth addressing," he writes. "So I went to the principal and discussed the issue with him, and he explained to me that the rule was made years ago because students were leaving their pizza boxes all over the school, creating a mess. I asked him if we could have a 'trial period.' "

The principal agreed. Marx called up the local pizza parlor and struck a deal to get students a special lunch price. When the time came for his speech, he discussed the pizza project as "an example of the things I would do in office, not just talk about."

The campaign strategy paid off. Marx won, and he felt great. "At least for the next year, I held my head higher. I was really proud of myself," Marx recalls.

He studied musical theater at the University of Michigan, decided he couldn't make it as a performer and went to Cardozo Law School in New York, thinking he'd try entertainment law. He passed the bar exam but realized he couldn't live a lawyer's life.

He started his book, and while he spent his days in the world of teen election angst, he also wrote songs. They earned him acceptance into a music-writing program, where he met Robert Lopez. They worked up a musical movie about the Muppets, which won them a share of a first-place $150,000 prize.

Meanwhile, "How To Win a High School Election" sold steadily.

The movie script went nowhere, but Marx and Lopez created a puppet musical, "Avenue Q," which opened at a nonprofit theater where the collaborators paid their actors by buying them dinner. The critics raved. The show went to Broadway in 2003. The Tony nominations followed.

But once again, Marx was the underdog in the Tonys, up against that popular cheerleader of the 2004 season, "Wicked," a splashy musical based on "The Wizard of Oz." He reached back for his high school election gambit.

"We had a big pizza party for some of the Tony voters," he said, "and we went in and presented a new song we had written for them, 'Vote Your Heart.' "

Once again, it worked. On a June evening in 2004, Marx and his partner stood onstage at Radio City Music Hall and accepted the Tony for best musical.

Like his devoted reader Marin Cogan, Marx knows that winning his 11th-grade student council vice presidency wasn't the biggest thing ever to happen to him. But he remembers when it felt like it was. And that was a start.