Let the Race Begin

It's Wednesday night, and Todd E Plants '01 is sitting down to dinner at Eliot House's newly renovated dining hall.

Munching on some popcorn chicken, he chats about the Red Sox, butterscotch pudding and the 1999 elections for the president and vice president of the Undergraduate Council.

The first question lobbed into his court is, on the surface, quite simple--"Todd, are you running for U.C. president?"

He draws back initially, a bit shocked. The election isn't until mid-December, and presidential candidates aren't supposed to formally declare their candidacy until after Thanksgiving.

"I'm pretty sure," he hedges at first.

When pressed, however, he comes clean.

"Yeah, OK, I'm running," he says with a smile.

Although most of the campus remains blissfully unaware of the politics behind the council elections, many candidates have been gearing up for the upcoming election for quite some time. Much like its counterpart on a national scale, Campaign 2000 is alive and well at Harvard College.

Jumping the Gun

For outsiders, it may seem premature, but for council insiders and observers, it comes as no surprise that candidates are coming out of the woodwork.

They may not be postering the Yard or soliciting votes door-to-door yet, but a great deal of maneuvering is happening behind closed doors, in committee meetings and private conversations with other council members.

"Everyone has to publicly pretend that you don't start running until November, but everyone's positioning themselves," says Beth A. Stewart '00, the council's former president.

Ideally, potential candidates would wait politely for their opponents to ready their platforms before launching into their own campaigns. But--as those have who have been there before say--the reality is that candidates who want a serious shot at the presidency must already have a core constituency in place when the gun goes off in mid-November.

"You need a stock of, say, 20 people who would go to bat for you, so that you're not the only person who shows up to poster in the Yard," Stewart says.

And in order to attract potential campaign workers from the council, a candidate has to look like a winner. So the jockeying for influence begins even before the first council meeting of the year.

"[You have to] institutionalize yourself as a figure of authority," says current council president Noah Z. Seton '00. "That type of posturing begins very early on."

So early, in fact, that many say this year's race for council treasurer between John A. Burton '01 and Sterling P.A. Darling '01--both of whom say they intend to run in December's election--was laced with rivalries likely to be played out in the upcoming months.

A Darling-Burton match-up was about more than who gets to add up the numbers for the council's weekly budget report. Veterans say offices like treasurer, secretary and the executive board give potential presidential candidates much-needed visibility and credibility.

"If you're treasurer, every week you get up and make your little speech, so everyone knows who you are," Stewart says.

"People perceived the secretary and treasurer elections to be an early test for the presidency," explains council member Fentrice D. Driskell '01, a former vice presidential candidate herself who says she is also planning to join the race. "Tensions escalate, and people form alliances very early."

Coining Cliches

The early push for prominence extends beyond the attempt to win friends on the council. Much like the new Democrats or the compassionate conservatives on the national political circuit, several of this year's council candidates are trying to re-make their images to appeal to the widest swath of the campus electorate.

In the four years that council presidents and vice presidents have been elected directly by students in campus-wide popular elections, candidates have been, for the most part, clustered into one of two well-defined groups.

On the one hand are the progressives, who feel that the council should tackle a wide range of social issues both at Harvard and beyond. In almost direct opposition are the more conservative "student-services" representatives, who feel that the council functions best as an instrument to improve undergraduates lives.

Council treasurer Darling has traditionally fallen into the latter camp.

A three-year member of the council, Darling has consistently taken conservative stands on many issues, ranging from the presence of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) on campus to whether the council should pass a resolution supporting gay marriages.

He served as the campaign manager for Seton and his running-mate Kamil E. Redmond '00 when the conservative-liberal duo successfully ran on a student-services platform last fall. And Darling is widely recognized as one of the dominant conservative voices on the council.

No wonder, then, that several council members were surprised to learn that Darling was enthusiastic about getting the voices of activist groups such as the Progressive Student Labor Movement--a collection of liberal students fighting against sweatshops and for a living wage--more involved in the undergraduate council.

"When we're writing bills about sweatshops, the PSLM should be there," said Darling in an interview with The Crimson, explaining that he believes there is a place for activist organizations in council debates.

"More than anything, the council just needs to make sure that the issues that it deals with aren't solely internally generated," Darling says. "We should concentrate more on addressing the concerns of student groups, be they politically oriented or service oriented."

Plants appears to be taking the same tack as Darling. Although he traditionally has been considered a progressive on the council, Presidential Candidate Plants plans to highlight his work on student services--such as the recent decrease in phone rates--during his campaign.

"I don't think that a progressive-only candidate will play to the student body," Plants says.

Picking a Partner

When Seton, a conservative, ran a successful ticket with staunch progressive Redmond last year, it became clear to many candidates that they would have to wed progressive inclinations with a student services platform if they wanted to win.

Many candidates may try to follow Seton and Redmond's cue and "balance their ticket"--choosing a running-mate who can appeal to constituencies they could not win over alone.

Stephen N. Smith '02, a progressive who has also spearheaded campus events such as last year's wildly successful Springfest, has found that his mixture of progressive and services-oriented accomplishments has made him a very desirable political partner.

So far, Smith says he has been approached by the progressive Driskell and by Darling.

But some questions about this strategy remain. Though Burton purports to be mindful of student services within the context of his progressive platform, he says he is doubtful of the effectiveness of a split ticket.

"That's a very good ploy to win, but I don't think it works very well in practice," he says, noting that the progressive half of the Seton-Redmond ticket was not as prominent during the first half of the pair's tenure as their campaign had suggested it would be.

Burton is also skeptical that candidates could convincingly straddle the conservative-progressive divide.

"I would be very surprised if the BGLTSA called me up and said, 'We're going with Sterling because he's whistling a different tune now,'" Burton says.