Winning isn’t everything for Undergraduate Council presidential candidate Jason L. Lurie.

“I would be equally happy if I lost but the winner used my ideas,” he says.

Lurie says he entered the race to whip up the competition and put his ideas on the table.

Lurie is the lone candidate running solo, in his second race for Council president and fourth campaign.

“You have to be arrogant,” he says, seemingly unfazed by his long electoral odds. “You have to think your ideas are the best.”

With an armband asking “Aren’t you a Proud Member of Jason Lurie’s Merry Band of Jokesters?”—a reference to a recent editorial by The Harvard Salient calling for his impeachment from the Council—Lurie posters Yard kiosks and walls in advance of next week’s presidential vote.

In his three semesters as Cabot House’s Council representative, Lurie has spent much of his time giving a voice to minority opinions and, of course, stirring up debate.

He opposed last spring’s council decision to grant funding to Harvard Right to Life’s controversial Natalie poster campaign.

He also attacked the council’s decision to restore funding to the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) after he led the drive to take away their financial support.

Lurie, who is vice president of the Harvard Secular Society, accused HRCF of discrimination in its constitution, which mandates that officers subscribe to specific principles of religious faith.

This confrontation made him unpopular with some students, but Lurie wears this, like his armband, as a badge of courage. Politically, he wears his heart on his sleeve. Outside of the Science Center last week, Lurie bore his defiant message even more explicitly: “If the Harvard Salient is afraid of him, he must be doing something right!”

What Harvard Student Want

Lurie says his extracurricular experience taught him what students want: more money for their student groups.

“[UC] programs are good but often wasteful,” he says, citing expensive concerts and Harvard-Yale shuttle subsidization. “What students really love is what they spend their time doing. And what they spend time doing is student groups.”

Lurie keeps busy as vice president of Demon, a Harvard humor magazine, as well as secretary of Harvard Students for Healthy Babies. “Unlike my opponents, I’m not a council-only guy,” he says.