With the field winnowed to two tickets, Tuesday night’s ASUO Executive Candidate Debate gave candidates the opportunity to finally address each other one-on-one.
Emma Kallaway and Michelle Haley, who had not yet been removed from the ASUO ballot, and their respective running mates, Getachew Kassa and Ted Sebastian, took the opportunity to question not just their rivals’ platforms and policies, but their campaign tactics and character traits as well.
ASUO Elections Coordinator Aaron Tuttle, who moderated the debate, said that he knew at the time that he was likely to remove Haley from the ballot. He asked the candidates to answer with a simple yes or no whether they would support OSPIRG coming back to campus. In what appeared to be a tense moment for her campaign managers, Kallaway said “yes,” as did Kassa. Haley and Sebastian said “no.”
Kallaway explained after the debate that she would only support OSPIRG as a closely watched student group, not as a contracted service as it was before. She said she would not support an OSPIRG with a budget as high as this year’s.
Candidates fired the opening salvoes in their introduction. Kassa spoke first. “All the candidates who are not affiliated with OAT (are) supporting us,” he said, later adding, “You have to ask yourself, ‘Why is that?’”
Haley countered strongly when she took the podium. “I woke up on Monday morning to be greeted by two beautifully painted banners and many, many fliers that were covered in lies,” she said. “I think it’s disgusting and shameful that (Kallaway and Kassa) are going to stand on a moral high ground and then pull Karl Rove tactics.”
From there, both sets of candidates took opportunities to snipe at their opponents. Particularly bitter was an exchange between Kallaway and Haley about what happened during a conference the two attended with the United States Student Association over spring break in Washington, D.C.
“I had the pleasure of going to a conference funded by student fees,” Haley said. She said she used the conference as an opportunity to lobby legislators on behalf of students, but that, “Every morning at 6 a.m., Emma was meeting with two people from the ASUO planning her campaign.”
Kallaway then snapped back, “At six in the morning, I’m pretty sure that you were sleeping and I was being more educated about the ASUO.”
After the debate, Kallaway said she had been meeting with ASUO alumni who did not want to be identified. She said it was “a privilege to see old perspectives” on a variety of issues, and the way she spent her time in Washington D.C. indicated her ability to get the maximum use out of available resources.
Sebastian responded by calling Kallaway and Kassa’s claims to independence insincere. “They already were a slate last week,” Sebastian said. “They weren’t independent candidates. Let’s not kid around here.”
The candidates also questioned one another’s policies, a part of the discussion in which both candidates largely played against type.
Though Haley’s supporters portray her as the more fiscally conservative candidate, it was Kallaway who touted fiscal responsibility more ardently. She said Haley’s promises, such as increasing the number of athletic tickets available to students and creating a transportation fee, would eventually cost students more money, even if they did not increase the incidental fee. “It’s money in students’ wallets,” she said. “And you’re asking it to be removed from there. And I strongly believe that.”
Kallaway said her emphasis on fundraising and finding tax credits to fund the ASUO would ultimately take a smaller toll on student pocketbooks.
Meanwhile, Haley and Sebastian lauded tuition equity and congressional advocacy, issues traditionally important to the progressive faction of ASUO politics.
Like the Candidate Q&A Session held April 2 and the first Executive Candidate Debate held April 7, Tuesday’s event drew few spectators not already heavily engaged in the ASUO.
The sparse turnout was exacerbated by confusion about what room the debate was to be held in. Tuttle moved the event, originally slated for the EMU Walnut Room, to 240C McKenzie, but did not update the elections board’s Web site. Tuttle said he left a student in the Walnut Room to direct interested viewers to the proper location and started the debate 15 minutes late to accommodate late arrivals.
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