| Transcript |
CLEAN Sweeps Up
Students give Hoglund's ticket a mandate
Throughout his campaign, CLEAN
presidential candidate Paul Hoglund
urged a "CLEAN sweep" of the Student's Association elections. He almost got his wish as Campus Leaders: Enthusiastic and Acting Now
took 36 of 39 seats in the SA election
held March 7 and 8.
This year's elections attracted
"I'm excited about it. I
may take a vacation, then
I should be hard at work."
—Paul Hoglund, SA
President-Elect
1,904 voters, down 27.8 percent from
last year's record turnout of 2,635
student, Elections Commissioner
Vikrum Bhatia said.
In a runoff election held March 13
and 14, Hoglund won 57 percent of
the vote over Michael Danke. SA
newcomer, Lee Flemming, of the
Representative Student Leader's ticket, squeaked by with 51 percent of
the vote over Hoglund's running
mate Yahya Saeed.
CLEAN claimed Senate-at-Large
positions 1-8 as well as Student Service Fee Planning and Allocation
Committee Positions 1-4. The party
took all colleges except for the College of Pharmacy, won by New Direction's Michael Ohelendt, and Social Science Position 3, won by Social
Science Independant nominee Shannon Wilkie.
"We're ecstatic," CLEAN Campaign Manager Damien Kauta, who
won SSFPAC Position 1, said, "We
feel like students have given us a
mandate to carry out our plan of action."
Current SA President Mikal
Belicove, who got 159 votes in his reelection bid, said he got more votes
than he expected. "When you con
sider that we (Belicove and Senator
Robert Miklos) did no campaigning
and virtually no advertising, I'm surprised," he said.
R&R nominee Michael Redmond
said he felt that a few things in his
campaign could have been changed.
"I suppose if I hadn't been accused
of running a smear campaign, things
i
would have turned out differently.
Or if I had chosen a better (party)
name. Last year, no one liked acronyms; this year, everybody did,"
Redmond said.
"Thank God," Dinke presidential
candidate Tim "Thor" Coker said of
the campaign's end.
"I hate to admit it, but I'm pulling
for Danke. Kind of a lesser-of-two-
evils thing," Coker said.
CLEAN's Mark Burge, who won
Senate-at-Large Position 7, said he
hoped that all the parties, despite
their differences, could rally together.
"Students on almost every ticket
have geniune concern for the university and I hope that we can pull
together on common ground," Burge
said.
For a few of the losing candidates,
however, rage was the order of the
day.
"It's a . . . pity that the outcome is
this way," Independent Alternative
Vice Presidential candidate Andrew
Monzon said after he received only
92 votes, It just goes to show you that
the SA elections will always be a
tokenistic, hellish popularity contest.
Don't blame me. I tried."
"I guess if I had gotten Scott
Streater to vote for me, I wouldn've
won," he said, in reference to The
Daily Cougar reporter who voted
nine times in last year's SA elections
and wrote a story detailing the ease
with which anyone could cast multiple ballots.
CLEAN requested recounts on one
"I found out who my
friends are. People asked
me how they could help."
—Lee Flemming,
Vice-President-Elect
of the positions they lost. "One of
them is understandable since the
pharmacy guy (Curry Demery) barely campaigned at all, but we lost Social Sciences Position 3 by one vote/'
Kauta said.
CLEAN Candidate Gene Simeon
and RSL's Scott Sonsalla lost with 61
votes each to Social Science Independents candidate Shannon
Wilkie's 62 votes.
Coker said he thought a recount
was a bad idea, "I think it's pretty
stupid. If you lost, you lost," he said.
Belicove said a homogeneous SA
could prove detrimental, but only
time would tell.
"When you have candidates of the
same philosophy and a party and all
of them win, you're bound to run
into a stalemate," he said.
-Frank San Miguel
54 RE!"" APE |
