Senior Jason Mock doesn’t hold a grudge against Adjunct Professor of Psychology Tony Brown.

In fact, Mock, who competed against Brown for a position on the Baldwin City Council in 2007, is now helping with his former political opponent’s campaign.

“It makes it tough,” Mock said of the election. “You’re trying to win, but you’re not trying to beat them at the same time. It makes it a little more difficult than if you just didn’t like the guy you were running against.”

When Mock ran against Brown in the primary 1 1/2 years ago, six people were elected to the city council. Mock was the odd man out and immediately started helping with Brown’s campaign.

“We ran more together than against one another,” Brown said. “He came to my office, and we put our heads together and talked about campaign strategy.”

Not much has changed since those days, except that Mock isn’t running against Brown anymore.

“I’ve known Tony for quite awhile through stuff I’ve done through city politics and city council, and I just want to see him get elected,” Mock said.

Brown is running for State Representative in the 10th District and is hoping Mock’s help will pay off Tuesday.

“I needed somebody to help me work on getting Baker students registered to vote and talking to them about my campaign,” Brown said.

Since then, Mock has been registering voters and working with campus outreach programs.

“Part of that whole effort on my part is just that I think that it’s important for people to exercise their right to vote,” Brown said. “I certainly think that’s important for people who have the benefit of a college education.”

In order to boost political action among Baker students, Brown made an appearance Oct. 14 at a forum hosted by two political science classes.

“I think it was important for the campus and community to get to know local candidates in general, but having Tony there showed the campus another side of him and gave people more of an idea of why he is running,” sophomore Dani Weimholt, who helped organize the forum, said. “I know for a fact that I have seen a new side of him, and I’ve even been his student before.”

For Brown, the transition from professor to politician hasn’t been an easy one.

“This time last year, I was an instructor at Baker, and that’s an important role to play, but it was about this time that I started seriously thinking about this,” he said. “It feels weird to be running a campaign and see your name on signs.”

One relationship that hasn’t been hindered by Brown’s political stint is his and Mock’s.

“I think Jason is just very passionate about the future of the state and future of the country,” he said. “He has a really good political mind. If this is something he wanted to do in the future, he’d be great at it.”

Mock plans to continue helping Brown well into the future.

“I hope that he gets elected this time around, but if he gets elected on Tuesday, two years from Tuesday he’s going to have to have a re-election campaign I hope I can help with,” Mock said. “I look forward to working with Tony in the future with anything he decides to do, and I hope he will help me out, too.”