Tickets...

One Campus

So, the One Campus ticket is headed up by Madeleine McKenna. It looks to be a very traditional ASUW ticket and campaign. There are returning Board Members (Madeleine and Tunny Vann), ASUW Insiders (Eric Shellan and Jocelyn McCurtain), Student Senate Leadership (Jed Bradely and Sarah Round), a Greek in Org Relations (Jonathan Yan), and Ty Huyhn Chhor in Diversity Efforts. By and large, it is a very strong ticket. It is the only complete ticket with eight members that I am aware of, so it will have a cash advantage over the other partial tickets, and its members generally have strong bases and connections to their positions.

There isn't much shocking about the ticket, right now. It was expected that Madeleine, Eric, Jed, Sarah, and Tunny would be running this year. Ty Huyhn isn't a shock either, due to her involvement in ASUW activities this year. Jocelyn is an interesting choice for Programming Director, but she has the record for it. The one out of place choice is Jonathan Yan. Having not met him, or spoken with him about the position, but having read his platform and discussed him with people who have met him, he doesn't make sense yet to me for the Org Relations position.

He doesn't have much ASUW experience, and has no experience with the entities the ASUW owns and operates, but his platform talks about implementing new financial systems and marketing plans. My own history with the Experimental College means I will hold any candidate for this position to a higher level, but I won't judge Jonathan yet.

Husky Nation

Husky Nation is Kyle Fuller's ticket. There are currently only two members with published facebook pages declaring their intent to run, but I am told there are another four members who are currently drafting their platforms. This brings up one weakness Husky Nation will face: their late start. Husky Nation, unlike One Campus and against general ASUW wisdom, did not form up until very recently. Kyle herself is a strong candidate for President due to her experiences in RHSA, on the ASUW Board of Directors, and working with the Alumni Association for the Husky Pride Fund and the UW Homecoming.

Kyle's VP is Sarah Chow. Sarah is a familiar face to anyone who has come into the ASUW office over the last two years, because she has been sitting at the front desk working as the Assistant to the Vice President for both of her years in ASUW. On its surface, it's an odd leap. Assistant to the VP to running for the office itself, but they say that often executive assistants know more about what their bosses do than even the boss does. It will be very interesting to see how Sarah performs this election season. How will she support her own candidacy? What will she bring to the table at the forums?

I'll talk more about the other positions as soon as I hear about them.

EDIT: Husky Nation has posted their ticket fan page, and listed out the other members of their ticket. They are, in no particular order, Pasha Kazerouni (Comm. Relations), Kyle Rapiñan (Diversity Efforts), Rory Raabe (Org. Relations), and Evelyn Jensen (Programming).

These four members are interesting choices. Kyle R. brings a lot of name recognition to this ticket. He has been on the front cover of the Daily repeatedly, been on local TV news, and is doing a lot of work in the greater Seattle Community, not just here on campus. Rory Raabe is a very smart choice for Organization Relations for the simple reason that she is currently the Assistant Manager of Rainy Dawg Radio, one of the four Orgs that ASUW operates. Rory will bring an insider's perspective on the operation of the Orgs and, presumably, has built at least a conversational relationship with the leadership in the other Orgs. Evelyn Jensen is a hit and miss candidate. On the Hit side of things, she has served at the "Associate Director" of Programming all year, working closely with Kyle Fuller (the current Prog. Director) on all of the projects associated with the position, which means she already knows the bulk of the job, won't have a learning curve, and can use this year's lessons to innovate if elected. On the Miss side of things, she is a very young candidate with precious little programming experience. She will have to work hard to overcome the "inexperienced" argument. Pasha appears to be a very strong Greek candidate, which helps round out UW Nation's appeal, but the duties of the Director of Community Relations involve more than reaching out to the Greek community. Pasha will need to show that he can reach out to the ECC, the Q Center, and the Commuters (a very difficult constituency to reach). Pasha might also want to sterilize his facebook page... or at least tidy away some of the drunken revelry pics.

Team Legacy

Jilberto Soto, the current Commission Director for La Raza is heading up another ticket based primarily out of the Ethnic Cultural Center. His VP is Dalia Amin, the sitting ASUW Director of Diversity Efforts, and his Programming Director is Sam Weinstein the sitting RHSA programming director. Over the last couple of years, the RHSA position has fed into the ASUW position of the same name, so Sam does have recent history on her side.

The question about Jilberto's ticket is will it be a resurgence of the goodwill and support that brought Anttimo Bennet into office? If Jilberto can tap into that, he could very well ride it to the President's office, perhaps bringing his entire ticket into the Board as well.

I'll add more information about other members of Jilberto's ticket after I've found out some more about them.

EDIT: So, I now have some more information. The Team Legacy ticket now includes Yong Cho (Community Relations), Benjamin Lealofi (Diversity of Efforts), Nick Booher (Org. Relations). Yong would bring a new element to the CR position, as he's based currently in the dorms, and not the greek system. It's been three years since we had an RHSA based CR in Sam E. Al-Khoury. Since then we've had Anttimo Bennet, Gerald Corporal and now Tunny Vahn, all of whom were tied to Greek houses.

Ben Lealeofi is a strong Div. Efforts candidate. He is currently a commission director and has strong ties with the other commissions and the RSOs that relate with the JCC. An excellent choice, and a difficult one for the other candidates to beat. Nick Booher for Org relations is a non-traditional choice. Nick is not a random Greek to be given that position to buy votes, nor is he a current employee within one of the entities Org Relations coordinates with. His campaign facebook page does not list his positions or go into why he is a good candidate for Org Relations, but rather simply lists campaigns he has done in the past and his UW experience. One intriguing note is that he is currently a supervisor in an RHSA outlet called "the Nook." I'm assuming, and yes it is an assumption, that his experiences there will give him a unique perspective on the way ASUW operates the four entities. His experiences could be good, or he could be completely unprepared. He'll bear more watching before we can tell.

Others?

There are persistent rumors of independent campaigns, as usual. I've heard of at least one based in the Christian/Greek Community which could tap the voter base that Dawg Life tapped two years ago. That voter base was not enough to take a lackluster candidate into the Presidency, but it was enough to elect a Director of Operations, and if that campaign works hard they could be a significant participant in the Presidential race, perhaps even swaying the results of the Instant Run Off voting, if that campaign drops in the first or second round.

Does anyone else know of other campaigns?