If the election for next year’s FUSA president is anything like the upcoming U.S. presidential election, George Bush should start sweating.
Incumbent Kevin Neubauer ’05 barely squeaked through Tuesday’s primary, trailing the big winner of the primary, Paul Duffy ’05, who received 501 votes, almost doubling Neubauer’s 268.
Outsider candidates Rory Butterly ’05 and Frank Arrigo ’05 got only 15 and 13 votes, respectively, but Ben Manchak ’05 nabbed an impressive 241 votes, falling just short of Neubauer’s tally.
For sure, Duffy is now the man to beat, and Neubauer has a lot of catching up to do if he’s going to beat him.
“Paul ran a great campaign and is running a good campaign,” Neubauer said. “It’s gratifying to make it this far. Obviously, I have a lot of work to do between now and next Tuesday.”
One of the reasons Neubauer is behind by such a margin is the seemingly overwhelming support of Duffy by the freshman and sophomore classes, traditionally the classes that vote in the largest numbers.
A few reasons might explain this. First, Duffy is a resident assistant in Jogues, allowing him to tap directly into the daily lives of most students living there and in the quad pretty easily.
But Duffy’s campaign style is another reason for his large margin of victory Tuesday. After the primary, Duffy described his campaign up to this point-how he has knocked on every single door on campus to talk with students, sometimes not even about FUSA.
“I sat with one kid for 40 minutes,” Duffy said. “We didn’t even talk just about FUSA. He was a transfer student, I just wanted to see what he had to say, see how things are here compared to other schools. It was great.”
Duffy’s advantage in Jogues and Regis is also notable because now Neubauer must fight against one of the principle factors that helped him win the FUSA presidency last year. That is, one of the key elements of Neubauer’s victory was his overwhelming support among freshmen and sophomores. It appears that this year the tables have been turned in Duffy’s favor.
Voter turnout in this year’s primary raised some eyebrows, too. 1,038 students voted total, a vast increase from just over 700 votes in last year’s primary. In fact, more students voted in this year’s primary than in the final FUSA presidential election last year. Perhaps this points to the most encouraging fact about this year’s FUSA election: more students are getting involved, and in any democratic system, more voices in the mix is always encouraging.
It also seems a “Nader” factor might have played a role in this year’s presidential election. The presidential campaigns of Butterly and Arrigo seemed to be exercises in futility at times, with Butterly refusing to formulate or explicate a platform during the course of the campaign, and Arrigo not even showing up for the debates.
Here is where the Nader factor comes in. Combined, Butterly and Arrigo received 28 votes. If those 28 votes had gone to Manchak, the most notable “outsider” candidate, he would have beaten Neubauer and made it to the final election.
“It’s a time for reassessment,” Neubauer said after learning the results of the primary.
He’s right. In any election where an incumbent is running, the election is largely a referendum on the administration of that incumbent. Duffy slammed Neubauer by 233 votes Tuesday night, and Manchak was almost able to squeak into second place.
Neubauer told The Mirror he would try to have “more one on one conversations with students” between the primary and the election. At this point, “more” better mean at least 234 one on one conversations he’ll have in the next few days. If not, he’ll have to find out something else to do next year besides being FUSA president.
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