Campus Voters Check the Political Pulse

Campus Voters Check the Political Pulse: Election season is approaching and college students are speaking out

by By Cody Winchester
Fort Collins Weekly
August 18, 2006

For the candidates of various political races around the state, the campus is a microcosm of the population at large, an important but sometimes indifferent demographic in which key votes can be won.

Increasing participation in campus political organizations has augmented the synergy between political candidates and their collegiate supporters, and both students and candidates are preparing for what’s shaping up to be a busy election cycle.

Colorado College Republicans vice chairman Derek Ewigleben is overseeing the get-out-the-vote effort at Colorado State University for the state GOP office, where he is a field staffer. The CSU College Republicans chapter, “one of the strongest in the state,” is going to play a very important role in the upcoming election cycle, he says.

Races to watch, he says, are House Districts 52 and 53, the governorship, and, of course, the 4th Congressional District. And though Ewigleben’s office will be supporting both Bob Beauprez and Marilyn Musgrave in their respective elections, they will be devoting most of their time to managing local politics.

“We try to help local candidates as much as possible because they don’t have as many resources,” he explains.

One of the chief tasks facing the College Republicans will be to recruit new members.

“We try to find that wedge issue, that one issue that students care about most, and really push that,” Ewigleben says. This year, he believes that issue to be student academic freedom.

“There is definitely no diversity of political thought on campus,” he says, and many college-age conservatives are becoming frustrated at this perceived homogeny.

Students also want to ensure that they will have a job after they graduate, and Ewigleben believes the best way to guarantee this is to elect conservative officials.

Ewigleben’s counterpart at CSU, Young Democrats president Ellen Steiner, says that one of her organization’s primary goals is to inform Democratic candidates about issues that affect students.

“It is important for us to associate issues and candidates together, so that people are confident in their elected officials and the decisions they make when they are in office,” she says.

The rising cost of higher education—which is tied to a host of other issues, including affordable healthcare, Steiner believes—is of course a concern for students, as are national issues like the Iraq war, immigration, natural resources and “other social justice matters.” Like Ewigleben, Steiner says students should use their right to vote as a catalyst for positive change.

“Electing Democratic representatives is imperative,” Steiner says, “because our platform includes progressive ideals that truly care about people living in the United States … with Democrats leading us, I am confident that good decisions will be made for the good of our society.”

Both the College Republicans and the Young Democrats will be registering voters on campus, something James Thompson, campaign manager for Angie Paccione, says will benefit his candidate.

“Young people aren’t always interested in politics,” he says. “Anything that helps them vote will certainly help us out.”

Perhaps the most important vote cast this election will be for the hotly-contested 4th Congressional District, in which Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave faces Paccione and Eric Eidsness, who is running on the Reform Party ticket. All three will be actively courting the college vote, though each is taking a different approach to doing so.

Thompson believes Paccione’s past educational experience will allow her to connect well with students.

“She certainly knows the value of higher education. College students are concerned about the future—they are our future, in a sense,” he says.

Thompson points to Paccione’s co-sponsoring of a bill last year that gave community colleges an additional $1 million, as well as her support of Referendum C, last year’s hard-fought vote that Thompson says kept colleges and universities from going bankrupt, as proof that Paccione is loyal to students.

“As an educator, Angie believes in affordable, quality education for all,” he says.

Eidsness doesn’t yet have the name recognition of Paccione or Musgrave, and as a minor-party candidate will be reaching out to college students of all political stripes to get his message across.

“I want to convince people at this age that (they) shouldn’t be trapped by partisan politics,” he says.

According to Eidsness, who has three college-age children, the most important issue facing students today—and indeed, all of America—is energy independence.

“This is the issue,” he says. “The greatest national security threat facing America, facing our way of life, our future, our children’s future, is the continued importation of foreign oil,” the profits of which Eidsness believes are being used to fund Middle-Eastern terrorist organizations.

He also wants to make sure that the “economic precipice” upon which the current generation is balancing is solidified for the next, even if that means cutting spending and raising taxes.

Phone messages left at Musgrave’s campaign office were not returned.

Tim Ruckh, a second-year graduate student in the college of engineering, is president of the CSU chapter of Americans for an Informed Democracy, a national organization whose goal is to increase student awareness of important global issues.

To accomplish this, the nonpartisan group hosts town hall meetings, conferences and panels, bringing in experts who lead discussions on these issues. It’s important, Ruckh says, to get beyond the “we versus they” mindset that he so often sees in the editorial pages, striving instead toward a model that embraces open, alternative participation in the political process.

“We try to find people who will speak to the policy, not the politics behind the policy,” Ruckh says.