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ASUI election brings high voter turnout, presidential pair wins by 92 votes
The results of the 2008 ASUI Spring Election were released Wednesday night. One thousand, seven hundred and eighty students at the University of Idaho cast their vote and Garrett Holbrook and Tricia Crump were elected president and vice president with 908 votes, or 53 percent of the total votes cast. The pair beat out their opposing team, Lauren McConnell and Derek Arnold by 92 votes.
Students also voted for eight new senators to join ASUI. Brad Griff, Patrick Bradbury, Casey Lund, Casey Attebery, Dakota Gullickson, Hui-Ju (Sophia) Tsai, John Will Rock and Osama Mansour were elected to the Senate. The candidates are listed from highest to lowest with Griff receiving 869 votes.
Newly elected ASUI President Holbrook said he was happy his hard work paid off in the election and couldn’t help but smile.
“I kind of want to jump around a bit,” he said.
Although Holbrook was all smiles after the election, he said he wasn’t overly confident before the results were announced.
“Lauren is a great campaigner, I knew that from the start and she had a very strong running mate,” he said. “I really wasn’t sure what the outcome would be and as you can see from the results it was a really close race.”
Crump said she was relieved by the outcome and excited to begin her term as vice president of ASUI.
“I got really close with a lot of the new senators during the campaigning,” she said. “I’m excited to work with them and represent them this year.”
Each team said they campaigned hard for the elections, but Crump admits there was some dirty campaigning on both sides of the race.
“Sidewalk chalking got really juvenile and there were e-mails sent out but it’s all in the name of campaigning,” she said. “I want to be in politics in the future and this kind of got me prepared for that.”
Holbrook said he stands by the fact that his campaigning tactics remained fair and candid throughout the race.
“I know everything we’ve done was honest,” he said. “I don’t see a point in fighting about it now because it’s in the past.”
Current ASUI President Jon Gaffney said there were few complaints but no violations to actual campaign rules were reported.
McConnell offered no comment on the topic but Arnold said he thought it was a fair race.
“Both sides wanted to increase voter turnout and I think we did that,” Arnold said.
The number of student voters increased from last year’s presidential elections by over 200 votes, and Gaffney said he was pleased with the number of students who took the time to vote.
McConnell said she will finish her term as senator but has no plans to continue working directly with ASUI next year.
“Garrett and I have some very fundamental differences,” she said. “But I’ve got a lot of other things to get done. This was one option but it’s definitely not the end of the road.”
Gaffney said it will be strange to leave office but is looking forward to what Holbrook and Crump will bring to the table.
Holbrook and Crump will be sworn into office on April 30 and will serve for the remainder of the semester.
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