Students Gear Up to Back Candidates in Primaries

With the primary season looming, ubiquitous “Students for...” political groups are abuzz with plans to attract student votes to the presidential candidates that they champion.

According to Mary McDonald, CC ’10 and co-president of Students for Barack Obama, Obama’s campaign has reached out to its college branches and asked them, via Facebook, to send messages encouraging support for Obama to students whose home states fall early in the presidential primary schedule. “They’re really trying to reach out to the youth vote,” she said, adding that her organization has identified about 100 target students at Columbia, and plans to begin messaging this weekend.

All of the groups say they have plans to send members to New Hampshire and Iowa, the first two states to hold their caucuses and primary elections. The Iowa caucuses will take place on January 3.

“If you can get to Iowa and you’re a college student, they [the Paul campaign] will pay for your housing, your food, everything for two two-week periods,” said Adam Sparks, CC ’08 and founder of Students for Ron Paul. Students for Ron Paul has also used fliers and chalk messages to raise awareness for Paul.

Unlike the grassroots Paul group, the Columbia branch of Students for Rudy is heavily tied to Giuliani’s official campaign. “Everything we do has to be run through them for legal reasons,” Chapter Chair Erica Kestenbaum, CC ’10, said. “You have to be really careful.” This week, the group participated in the campaign’s Thursday night National House Party, which Kestenbaum said consisted of about 1,000 viewing parties across the nation with a live webcast of Rudolph Giuliani speaking.

Students for Hillary, originally founded during Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaign in 2006, also points to involvement with the candidate’s main office. “It’s very exciting. I did not know it was going to turn into this,” said the group’s co-founder and leader Anna Durrett, BC ’08. “Now that she’s running for president, the stakes are higher.” Like several other groups, she cites plans for a phone-banking initiative and student involvement on Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday,” a day on which more than 20 states will hold their primary elections.

The “Students For...” groups are funded as component groups of the campus’s party-based political clubs—the Columbia University College Democrats and the Columbia University College Republicans—which say they plan to remain neutral until after the primaries. “We as a group don’t endorse any particular candidate,” said Beccy Dunnan, CC ’08 and the College Republicans’ director of public relations.

“We do our engagement with the primary process through our umbrella groups,” Jonathan Backer, CC ’10 and College Democrats’ media director, said. The Democrats’ largest primary-centered event was Wednesday night’s “Maucus,” an Iowa-style mock caucus where representatives for each Democratic candidate spoke to a crowd of about 75, attempting to attract sufficient support to move on in the simulated race.

Thus far, relations between the competing groups appear cordial. “They’re friends with each other, but they’re also competitive,” Columbia Political Union General Manager Alastair Shearman, SEAS ’08, said. “They want people to vote for their candidate.”

“There are no bad feelings,” Kestenbaum said. “I think we all share a similar feeling, which is that it’s a great time. It’s really exciting to be so involved in a presidential campaign as an undergraduate.”

Mary Kohlmann can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.