How I Chose My Candidate

Cheap vodka is a dark mistress, a sadistic queen of bondage whose hot wax burns equally upon your liver and soul. Hood River Vodka is perhaps the cheapest of all Vodka, a mere distillation removed from being an anesthetic. The lost souls of Hood River have dedicated themselves to turning even the most tactful alcoholic into a raging drunk, overtaken by the Fear and Darkness of a spiraling vortex into insanity. Alone in her grip, the world is your enemy. This is the sort of distorted enlightenment you need to achieve to chose a worthy candidate for any office. HRD was responsible for my winning campaign for class president my senior year of high school, so again I called upon her guidance to navigate me through the political fog. So let’s get this piece started while I can still see the letters on the screen, and while my mouse is still attached to the keyboard and not swinging around my head like a ball and chain swatting at invisible insects.

To give a candidate-by-candidate profile would be giving way to much credibility to their campaigns. All candidates are not created equal, but all campaign platforms include the words “diversity” and “rapport.” As in “Build diversity and create a rapport with administration.” Rapport just sounds like an important word. Who are else are you going to build a rapport with? The pizza guy? A postal worker? So let’s ignore for an instant the lexicon of spin. Ten candidates, one ring to control them all. That ring, of course, is the Emerald’s editorial selection, more often than not a free pass through the primaries. You could also say that having ties to the previous administration is another ring, but that would two rings, one two many. Or too many, rather.

You can promise students that your going to get them the old Sacred Heart parking garage, you can look them in the eye and say that the Blazer’s will be here for exhibition games, you can even swear upon your mother’s ashes gathering dust in your closet that you will rid this campus of all subversives. But nobody will believe you. Campaign promises are like women, hollow and empty. Heather wasn’t a woman. She was a girl. I thought she loved me. But she hurt me. I don’t know that she loved anybody. Not even herself.

All you can ask of a candidate is to not mess up, try to keep their noses clean, and to stop dreaming about flying cars running on ethanol and free public health care. That only exists in Canada, and the traffic is a nightmare. Campus activist and folk legend Bruce Miller keeps telling me how neither the Emerald nor ASUO seem interested in the massive educational budget cuts going on in Salem. He says the Emerald threw him out on the pavement when he stormed into their office and demanded they pay attention. Songs have been written about lesser men. But don’t mourn for him, organize. The Doing it in the Dark campaign seeks to save students $20 in energy fees. The state budget cuts will wind up costing the University millions of dollars and will ultimately require tuition hikes. Register-Guard editorials have compared our current predicament to the aftermath of Measure 5. The Register-Guard will never lie to you. Matt Cooper used to work at Fed-Ex. He’s an honorable man.

But let’s ignore the issues for now and focus on the candidates. Like Mad Max in the Thunderdome, a true contest is always between two combatants willing to claw it out until the death, or at least until someone squeaks out an “Uncle.”

This year’s ASUO Execs have been bunkered up in Suite 4 like hibernating squirrels feeding on a bounty of nuts. Pilliod and Buzbee seem like a seamless continuation of Brooklyn and Nair, which for better or worse is probably the best we can hope for. Continuity is the only thing we have left to hope for out of the ASUO. But you have to admire the spunk of Richie and Babkes. Their ad on the back of the Emerald’s election issue was classic. They stood together defiantly surrounded by about twenty of their frat buddies, ready to take on the world, or at least untap the keg. These kids are fighters, but they lack a real cause. Their primary platform is that they’re different than previous Execs. Fair enough. Heather said she was looking for someone different. She said I made her feel “boxed in.” When she got out of the shower I thought she smelled like peaches. Maybe it was the conditioner. Or it maybe it was the rotting smell of her heart.

So who will it be? Pilliod/ Buzbee or Richie/Babkes. Do you remember the story of Ralph the Mouse? He could ride a motorcycle. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know who I’ll vote for, either. Probably Richie and Babkes. Some people are saying that they bought their way into the campaign. But money can’t buy you love, it can’t put a clock on the side of the EMU, and it can’t be used to purchase food. That’s because the money we’re talking about is the incidental fee, and it doesn’t belong to the ASUO. It belongs to the students.

One way or another, log onto DuckWeb and vote. The preservation of the Suite 1 demands it. But make sure they count your vote. Don’t let them herd you along like sheep while they oversee a false election. And don’t let her break your heart. You’re better than that.

Pete R. Hunt, whois never informed when his TRIG meeting is canceled, is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oregon Commentator.