Elections Wrap-Up

Who's Bitter? Everyone!

With the election season wrapping up, once again a trail of tears and bile is flowing. Here's your insider scoop on who's mad at who and why.

I need a shower. I feel really, really dirty. For the third year in a row I somehow managed to have a compelling interest in ASUO elections. I should know better than this, yet it's true what they say about abuse being cyclical. Next year I promise to stay home for three weeks and beat myself with a switch used by 18th century French nuns to flagellate recalcitrant convent school girls. It will be less painful in the long run.

This year somehow managed to distinguish itself by being simultaneously the best and worst election I've had the misfortune of witnessing. Worst: Everything became personal this year with little provocation. Politicking was mean and petty. Not that I would expect anything else, but this year all the nastiness was aired publicly. Which was quite a surprise to me, because even bitter cynics such as myself at least try and stay above board in the pages of the Emerald, regardless of any verbal sodomy I might commit behind closed doors. But Jesus, sending out mendacious press releases? Or did we just not bother to check facts? (I love ya, Bill, but I really think you're going to hell for that). Then there's the best: OSPIRG. Period. The thought of hundreds of patchouli-soaked kids piling into VW microbuses cruising from campus to campus trying to figure out what happened to that $147,000, well, it brings a mist to me eyes, laddie.

So there you have it. I'm torn. I'll do my best to explain it all. I've been living at ground zero for two weeks and I'm still busy trying to tally up the body count. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Now here I am, trying to explain it all to you. Like Blake, I have seen my demon and yearned for a God, and struggle to forge a language to contain them both. Or maybe I'm just trying to mask my confusion about this whole thing by clumsily cleaning out the Aegean stables of English literature. At any rate, try and keep up. I am far from the only one who is bitter and confused (although I am the only one with cojones enough to express my frustrations by dropping my pants in public). Here's a list of the players and why they're unhappy with the elections. In no particular order:

Kelli McCartan
Well, I know I'd be bitter, if I'd blown $3,000 in a losing effort. Ms. McCartan, however, is far more chipper about the whole thing. Even her campaign manager, Max "Baywatch" Lee Kwai, seems to have a positive attitude about the dismal failure of the campaign. All this despite being insulted and mocked by the likes of me. As one of McCarten's campaign workers put it, "Max could put a positive spin on Nuremberg."

Nonetheless, McCartan has several valid reasons to be upset about the way elections were conducted. She was put at a disadvantage right away after a member of the elections board (who run the ASUO elections) overstepped her bounds by telling McCartan she could submit her voter's guide statement late. The elections board reneged and many students had to vote without having read her statement. She filed a grievance immediately about the decision, which to be fair was not all her fault, but the elections board took three weeks to decide what to do about it, and by then it was to late to get her statement in the voter's guide anyway. But then of course when ASUO President Bill Miner decides to file a complaint against Kelli for giving out dead tennis balls with her name on it, citing elections rules which forbid giving out "objects of value," the elections board acts immediately and confiscates her balls that same day. The ASUO president really shouldn't be filing elections complaints; it's just bad form, especially since he is technically the boss of the elections board. No wonder they acted so swiftly. And are dead tennis balls really "objects of value" anyway? What about the fourth amendment? What about the second amendment (patience, Kelli, the time of purification will soon be at hand)?

Oh, yeah, and ASUO Vice-president Ben Unger almost got in a fight with Kelli's dad. He was distributing campaign materials in a classroom, when Unger showed up basically representing himself as a member of the elections board, and told McCartan Sr. he couldn't leaflet on desks (despite the suspicious lack of complaints from the same quarter the Wortman/Cowlings ticket did the same the week before). Whether leafleting in classrooms is against the rules is still somewhat murky. What isn't murky is that Ben Unger shouldn't have been enforcing any elections rules, as he had publicly identified himself as being head of the USSA ballot measure campaign. Any reasonable person would also associate him with puppeteering the Progressive slate campaign, OSPIRG, and the Wortman/Cowling campaign. For obvious reasons, the rules are very clear on this point: those enforcing elections rules should not also be campaigning. I encourage you to look at the grievances yourself--I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that if Mr. Unger did what the McCartan campaign alleges, he more than threatened the integrity of the entire election.

But they don't seem that bitter, despite it all.

Geneva Wortman/Morgan Cowling
They won (tentatively). They don't have that much to be bitter about. There aren't many charges specifically leveled at their campaign. But they're worth mentioning because despite the number of complaints being flung back and forth, their candidacy is notable for filing the lamest grievance. The day the Emerald endorsed the Kriegel/Labavitch campaign, the ODE also ran the candidate profile for Wortman and Cowling. The duo actually filed a formal grievance, complaining that it was unfair to detract from their shining accomplishment on the front page by endorsing another pair of candidates the same day. It's called editorial privilege, girls. Look into it. You're lucky the Emerald is gracious enough to give all the candidates front page coverage to begin with. Then look what happens when you piss them off --you win and they run the headline "Wortman, Cowling Snatch Executive." I think that was the title of a movie I saw last time I was in Times Square.

Tamir Kriegel/Greg Labavitch
The moral to the story: $120 doesn't cut the mustard. But escaping this election without a single formal complaint filed against your candidacy is quite an achievement. It means your detractors have to resort to calling you *gasp* "white" and "conservative" -- despite ethnicity and leanings toward the Peace Corps that would indicate otherwise. Oh well, you can only suffer the indignity of selling so many Slurpees before it starts to cloud your judgment, right Jim? But I imagine the ASUO wasn't paying you enough to stand outside Suite 4, smoke cigarettes and gossip. Oh, I'm sorry -- am I being unfair to you, Jim? Probably, but at least you know how it feels.

The Progressive Campaign
The Progressives have pretty much drawn the crosshairs on Autumn DePoe, whose grievance against their slate resulted in allowing all of the candidates who ran against the Progressive candidates in the primaries back in for the general election.

Ms. DePoe alleged that their slate had illegally set up a table on 13th Avenue for campaign purposes. After a quick investigation, the ASUO Constitution Court found that candidates are not allowed to schedule tables, and even if they were they never would have been allowed to put it where it was within a stone's throw from the voting booths. The Progressives should buck up --the penalty didn't change any outcomes for their slate.

OSPIRG
They lost an election for the first time in 27 years. Are they bitter? You bet. In fact there were a lot of tears election night. Some professional lobbyists might lose their jobs. Damn shame. Ben Unger and other OSPIRG supporters have been wandering around taking pictures of "right-wing conspirators" so that Carolyn Whipple, the campus OSPIRG organizer, may throw darts at the heads of those who worked on the campaign against OSPIRG. This just goes to show you what class acts you're dealing with here.

Anyway, they're pissing and moaning about Jonathan Collegio, the man who ran the Honesty Campaign against OSPIRG. Apparently several grievances have been filed against Collegio for using a bullhorn on the street to campaign. Yet another scheduling violation like the Progressive campaign. It's too early to see how valid the Constitution Court thinks this complaint is. Jonathan has also been accused of intimidating a "female authority figure" in the form of Christy Lorenzini, Elections Coordinator. Sticks and stones, people. OSPIRG hopes these complaints are serious enough to have a special election to possibly overturn the results.

The Honesty Campaign
Even before voting began, OSPIRG came out swinging against the Honesty Campaign, OSPIRG's first organized competition in its 27 year history. First, ASUO President Bill Miner issues a press release accusing Jonathan Collegio and the Honesty campaign of funding their campaign with "off-campus," "special interest money." The cat was outta the bag -- Jonathan was, oh God no, a Republican. Miner accused Collegio of soliciting a legislator and a lobbyist (Randy Miller and David Moss, respectively) at the state Republican Dorchester conference for campaign funds. Of course, he didn't bother to confirm whether either person was actually in attendance at the conference (they weren't). Nonetheless, that didn't stop the press from quoting Miner's press release, which was riddled with errors and horribly biased. According to Collegio, Miner even acknowledged some factual problems with his press release, but by then the damage was done. Reportedly, the two are in the process of kissing and making up. The moral to the story? Don't piss off a drunk Sicilian.

However, Miner also managed to royally piss off Lynn Snodgrass (State House Majority Leader) in the same press release by attributing words to her that she denies having ever said. Good luck getting that across-the-board tuition freeze now.

So kids, that's roughly the score as I see it. Of course, so many formal complaints have been filed that the possibility exists that the ASUO Constitution Court will see fit to overturn the results and hold a brand new election. As it stands, the results from the election have been enjoined -- no one will get money or take office until the Constitution Court says. In the meantime, I have already taken the liberty of hiring a telepathic governess from a post-Soviet parapsychology institute. Even in the sanctuary of my private chamber, if I so much as allow the words Student Government to enter my head, she has explicit instructions. She will suddenly materialize, to flay my bared buttocks with a heavy Cyrillic ruler screaming, "Dun't sink avout it!"

Mark Hemingway, a senior majoring in Journalism, is Associate Editor of the Oregon Commentator