Slightly more than three hours before officials announced the results of the 2006 Associated Students elections, San Diego State business management junior Daniel Goldberg sat in a small room in Aztec Center and wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead.

As elections committee members discussed past business and monotonously approved the minutes of their previous meeting, Goldberg avoided drawn-out eye contact and kept to himself. The presidential candidate took long, deep breaths as he gazed down at his binder.

The room fell silent as committee member Scott Simpson asked to indefinitely postpone the punishment of Goldberg, who was called to the emergency meeting to hear whether he would be disqualified from the elections for violating campaigning rules.

Elections committee chair Israel Alarid asked the committee if there was a second to the motion.

Nobody said a word.

Alarid asked again if there was a second to the motion.

Again, the room was silent – and Goldberg’s fate was apparent. The elections committee wanted Goldberg gone.

The motion was cleared from the floor and committee member Michelle Hill made a second motion.

“I move to disqualify Daniel Goldberg,” Hill said to the disbelief of many in the room.

The new motion was quickly seconded, and Goldberg’s fate was in the hands of six students who hardly knew him.

Two weeks ago, Goldberg would never have known that it would come to this.

An outsider to the inner workings of A.S., Goldberg entered the presidential race promising to bring a fresh face to student government.

His prospects went downhill on Wednesday, when an article in The Daily Aztec revealed that he, along with four other executive council candidates, had violated campaigning rules by using the popular social-networking Web site, MySpace, to endorse his candidacy.

Later that day, A.S. council members voted 29-0 to issue two reprimands to Goldberg – one for allowing a friend to post a message on MySpace endorsing his candidacy and another for the offensive nature of the message that read, “If SDSU students don’t vote for this player ? They’re gay.”

These infractions, added to the reprimand Goldberg already received for posting a sign that said, “Do you really want Lambda Chi in charge of SDSU?” made him eligible for disqualification, pending a vote of the elections committee.

When it came time to discuss Goldberg’s fate, he spent about 20 minutes fighting an uphill battle.

“I understand it is my first shot at A.S.,” he told the elections committee. “I guess you can say I wasn’t thinking.

“I didn’t think that (the sign) would be considered harassment or anything. I just thought I was stating a fact. I can see how it would be taken offensive if you are part of the organization now, and I wish I could take it back, but I cannot.”

Hill, however, did not readily accept the excuse of being new to student government.

“I understand that he’s new to A.S.,” Hill said. “But I’m new to A.S., too, and I understand the rules and bylaws and everything else.

“I’ve only been a part of Associated Students for four or five months now, and I completely understand every rule I need to know.”

From where he sat halfway down the wood-grain table in the Aztlan Room in Aztec Center, Goldberg could do little more than express remorse and beg the mercy of the committee.

“I just hope that I’m not disqualified for a comment,” Goldberg said. “It was disrespectful, and I apologize.”

When discussion was over and the committee took its votes, Goldberg tilted his head slightly upward and mouthed the words, “please, please, please” to himself.

The committee voted 4-0 – with Simpson abstaining – to disqualify Goldberg from the race. He was effectively ousted from A.S. before he could even hear the election results, making him the first candidate to be disqualified from an election since presidential hopeful Robert Fitzer was embroiled in a controversy in 1992 for having campaign signs that were too large.

In the end, Goldberg came in well behind the two other presidential candidates, garnering only 322 votes, representing about 11 percent of all voters.

“No one even has faith in me that I’m going to win this thing,” Goldberg said shortly after being disqualified and just hours before officials announced the election results. “When we go to A.S. council, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m going to win. But if I lose, I just hope I can be reinstated just so, even though I lost, I finish off clean. But we’ll see how that goes.”

A.S. council will decide this week whether to uphold Goldberg’s disqualification when it certifies the results of the election. The meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Wednesday in the A.S. council chambers.