The ASUO candidate question and answer session began with one candidate announcing it was “a waste of time” and walking out along with all the other members of his campaign.
“I see two things,” vice-presidential candidate Lucas McAdams said. “I see not a lot of people and I see a lot of familiar faces.”
McAdams spoke before rows of chairs in Gerlinger Lounge that were mostly empty. The number of students in the room stayed at about 30 after McAdams and the handful of candidates on his slate left. Of the students who were there, an overwhelming majority were current or former office-holders in the ASUO, campaign members, or with campus publications.
“That’s exactly what we are running against,” said McAdams’ running mate, presidential candidate Cassi Gritzmacher. “Exclusivity and that culture of just no one’s interested.”
ASUO Elections Coordinator Nolan Gary said the walk-out would affect the way the next debate between candidates goes.
“Next time, one of our big thing is going to be getting more people here,” he said.
But he defended the debate, saying it still afforded candidates the opportunity to get their message out in campus publications and called it a tradition.
The four sets of candidates who remained took the opportunity to iterate their campaign positions. The format of the event did not allow candidates to directly rebut opponents’ points but did allow them to showcase their talking points.
Presidential candidate Jairo Castaneda and running mate Alex Esparza emphasized their campaign’s focus on efforts to strengthen campus unity: creating an advocate for students with disabilities, strengthening the roles of multicultural advocates and emphasizing grassroots.
Esparza did the majority of the speaking for the two and said if he and Castaneda were elected, the vice president and president would be positions of equal power “so that it wasn’t president being the most important position with vice president being the little henchman-type person.”
One of Castaneda’s rivals for the presidency, Alex McCafferty, was keen to emphasize his experience in the ASUO, in which he has held various positions since he was a freshman. He pointed to his role in making The New York Times available for free on campus this year and creating a new system for football tickets in the coming year.
His running mate, Alden Williams, said her energy and outsider status would complement the more phlegmatic McCafferty.
Fellow presidential candidate Amelie Rousseau focused on expanding the areas the ASUO affects, including using it to create more student housing opportunities and a new academic minor in civic engagement, as well as expanding the ASUO’s for-credit internship program.
She and running mate Maneesh Arora also emphasized their campaign’s independence as opposed to McCafferty’s, Castaneda’s and Gritzmacher’s, all of which are formally allied with slates of candidates.
Pete Lesiak, running a pirate-themed campaign, alternated between making serious points and pirate references.
“Our campaign’s been light-hearted, consumed with jokes, pirate innuendo,” Lesiak said, adding that that’s how he’d run his administration if elected.
While the debate was going on, Gritzmacher said her slate went to a bar to campaign.
“I felt like going to Taco Tuesday, to be honest with you, would be a better use of our time,” she said.
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