The first (serious) hat has been thrown into the ring (a Stanford Chaparral slate entitled the “Hertz-Coggeshall Family for Excellence” has been in the mix for a number of days – at 27 petitions (as of 10:50 PM) it does not seem to be generating serious interest). Rumblings of a potential Michael Cruz/Stewart Macgregor-Dennis Executive slate had been floating around the political community for several weeks, but the slate was officially launched today along with an email campaign aimed at rapidly reaching the required 200 petitions. The slate currently has 272 petitions (as of 10:50 PM), so it has easily crossed the first barrier to becoming Executive. What are the two all about?
The two Senators (Cruz ’12 and Macgregor-Dennis ’13) are currently campaigning on three key planks: (A) “applying experience,” (B) “entrepreneurship and tech,” and (C) “engaging the community and measuring results.” Cruz has spent three years in the ASSU – two in the Senate, one in Frosh Council – and Macgregor-Dennis has spent two – one in the Senate and one on Frosh Council. Introducing technology into the work of the ASSU has been a passion of Macgregor-Dennis (henceforth MD to save on writing) since he arrived in the Senate – he was behind a bill to add more projectors to the Meyer Library tech desk and has been creating content for and managing the Senate website. The third plank seems to be a mix of MD and Cruz – community engagement is certainly one of Cruz’s goals, but (from my recollection) it’s MD who has led some of the push for bills such as “UGS-F2010-6: Bill to Enact Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection on Undergraduate Senate By-Laws.” He has also been a voice behind the recent hiring of an economic consultant to analyze data about the operation of the ASSU.
So far, I’ve heard little about other viable slates – not that they don’t have the potential to exist, but it’s really interesting to see that there isn’t the same clamoring for this position that one might expect. That gives Cruz-MD (Dr. Cruz?) a chance to keep solidifying its position and thereby intimidate potential opposition. Then again, Cardona-Wharton was the last slate to enter the pool last time. We’ll keep watching to see how everything shakes out.
