The two Undergraduate Student Government Downtown presidential candidates Alexis Kramer-Ainza and Frank Smith III want the students to know they have had the students in mind during the campaign season.
Both candidates said they have been pleased with their campaigns this year and are looking forward to the elections starting Tuesday.
“We definitely are very content with our campaign,” Kramer said. “Just the fact that we kept things clean and that we didn’t break any rules, because it is something so rare, and the elections code should be our guide.”
Having the students be aware of the platform points and what a Kramer presidency would do are the key factors to her campaign, she said.
“Our biggest platform point that we want to push is OrgSync,” she said. “We’ve already met with contacts; we are going to be part of the design phase, and we are going to the conference if elected. So we have options to work with the new OrgSync, and even though a contract was signed, this does not mean we won’t work to get something new and better for the students.
Kramer has been endorsed by five out of the seven senators who are not running on an executive ticket. Kramer said she is proud of this and that it is not inaccurate as the Smith ticket has expressed.
“Currenty at the time when we asked for the endorsement from senators we had nine senators, but two were on tickets, so it’s not like I can endorse myself and the other person isn’t going to endorse us,” Kramer said. “The fact that we already have five out of the seven endorsing us, that is a lot, so why would he point that out?
Another factor the Smith campaign has pointed out about the Kramer campaign is that certain ideas on her platform actually came from him.
“The thing about the ideas being his is the fact that he continued to say ´I’m going to do it´ but it hasn’t gotten done, so that is why we incorporated those ideas into our platform, like having the library open 24/7,” Kramer said. “Whatever it takes to get the library open 24/7 and over the past year, it has been said, ‘We are going to get it done,’ but it hasn’t been done.”
The Smith ticket is also pleased with its campaign and its student interaction throughout the process.
“I feel that the campaign has been going very well,” he said. “We have been out there every day interacting with students, seeing exactly what they want to see for next year, and we have been getting a lot of positive responses and we have developed our platform throughout the campaign to use a lot of input from students.”
Smith said he has been receiving great ideas from students he has been talking to and will look into ways he can get these ideas to come to fruition if re-elected.
“I was talking to a Muslim student, and they asked me about getting a prayer room for students, and another student asked if we could get ice machines in the residence halls,” he said. “So these are some of the things students have been talking to me about and these are things we can work on getting done.”
Smith has supporters from fraternities and sororities as well as members of the Programming and Activities Board.
“We have a lot of good supporters,” Smith said. “Omega Delta Phi president is backing us, and we have a good number of PAB downtown members backing us like the president and the PAB president-elect and PAB vice-president-elect backing us and saying they want to work with us next semester.”
Smith has been outspoken about certain aspects of Kramer’s campaign using dirty politics.
“If you look at her social media, some of her supporters are directly sending out jabs such as using our hashtag, #LetsBeFrank, but saying ‘#LetsBeFrank you suck as president,’ and stuff like that, so I was surprised by that,” he said.
Smith said the focus of the campaign should be on the students and that is what he is focused on.
“It seems like we should be more focusing on students and what we are going to do next year and I have been directly interacting with students and what they want for next year,” he said. “We have a lot of things we want to accomplish next year and we think our experience will helps us achieve our goals.”
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Reach the reporter at jshanco2@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @joey_hancock
