Dems To Rank Council Candidates

Members of the Harvard College Democrats circulated the group’s first-ever questionnaire last night to all Undergraduate Council candidates to identify which candidates stand by the Dems’ own beliefs.

The group will release the results to members before election voting begins tomorrow.

“It will be very helpful for our members to know where [the candidates] stand on issues,” College Dems President Andy J. Frank ’05 said. “Mostly students just vote based on posters or if they’ve talked to the candidate, but this survey introduces accountability.”

Completion of the survey is voluntary, but Frank said the College Dems will hold council candidates responsible for their positions as stated in the survey once they are elected.

The questionnaire consists of seven questions about issues that affect Harvard students directly. Topics include more funding to student groups, opposition to religious discrimination on campus and environmental concerns in Allston.

After the seven yes or no questions, the Dems are providing council candidates with a guide to answering them.

“As long as it’s issue-based, I think it can raise the level of the debate,” council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 said in response to the initiative. “You take something like student group funding and that doesn’t really break up along party lines,” he said.

Although the College Dems plan to send the results of the questionnaire to the approximately 2,000 undergraduate students in their database, they will not endorse any candidates.

“We think it’s better to put our issues out there and get our voice heard,” Frank said.

Harvard Republican Club (HRC) spokeswoman Lauren K. Truesdell ’06 said the results of the College Dems survey would be useful for her group as well.

“If certain candidates receive low scores from the Dems, it might give some incentive to conservatives to vote for them,” Truesdell said. “It will be interesting to see both ends of the spectrum.”

Unlike the College Dems, the HRC plans to endorse any dues-paying HRC member who is running for council representative. According to Truesdell, the names of these candidates will be released today.

Mahan said he did not support tactics like specifically recruiting freshmen to run in the election on behalf of political groups.

“If that’s what’s going on with them, specifically identifying people to run for the Republican club, then that’s problematic and destructive to the council,” Mahan said.

But Truesdell denied that the HRC participated in such actions.

“We encouraged our membership to run in an effort to expand the Republican contingent in the council, but we didn’t go around looking for freshmen to run,” Truesdell said.

—Evan M. Vittor contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Monica M. Clark can be reached at mclark@fas.harvard.edu