Sunday, January 29, 2006

The Return of Susan?...

The Radikal has received posts from me at FIU, Target Copy Centers, and now...yes... Peter Gruskin's borrowed laptop! Stranely enough, UFSG never loses its edge, it remains interesting, constantly re-inventing itself. The current situation is awkward, the Greeks seemed for the most part in disarray, some are hoping for a Lindsay Cosimi surprise run, others are skeptical of the Chris Carmody'esque bid of John Boyles (apparently w/ substantial Greek support), and yet a few Greeks are wondering whether or not they should screw fmr. IFC President Jared Hernandez for a second straight year or perhaps see what the Sig Ep law student has up his sleeve (I mean Bryson was pretty damn cool, why not 'ole Jared).

Now I'm always sitting on here talking about the "yellow and blue" and true enough the old guard remains in the news. Diane Kassim is out on the prowl with Old Guard party boss Andre Samuels; John Boyles and Old Guard Access colleague Mackenzie Moritz are officially the tag team of 2006; Christian Duque (you know...ME) is working with ACCESS; and of course a few sell outs from the old guard party remain with Gator, probably dusting off their old stickers, laughing over at the swamp with laura gonzalez and joe goldberg.

Oddly though, in an almost Voice'esque way, Progress or 'independent elements' are pushing for Susan Vaz Henriques to run for treasurer this Spring. I myself wrote a letter to the Alligator urging Goldberg, Cosimi, & Co. to consider the fmr. Progress candidate for what seemed a vacant treasurer's position just a couple of weeks ago. Still, I find it very interesting that Mackenzie is running John's campaign, meanwhile administering Susan's campaign blog. My guess is, Mackenzie will split Progress, by helping Boyles at the presidential level ( i.e. how Andre Samuels directly ran Jamal Sowell's campaign), meanwhile Susan Henriques might start out as a free agent and then out of no where emerge with the Engage bid and run alongside Boyles. With Susan on an Engage ticket, she could assume the position or inherit the load of Frances Harrell and James Argento insofar as overseeing her own campaign as well as lending attention to the senate races. There can be no question that all of us that ran in 2004 were inspired by the Access campaign, its successes will probably live with us our whole lives in one way or another, so when we embark on campaigns of our own, I believe a great deal if not the bulk of the direction can be attributed to or compared to, Access 2004.

I became Andre Samuels with Voice in 2005, meaning I ran a party my way and got things done as I saw them needed. It's not safe to say Mackenzie ran the day-to-day operations of Progress b/c for one he was a candidate and second of all b/c I happen to have worked side by side with his campaign team while I worked with my own for Voice. In a way I'm not at all surprised Mackenzie is not running for an exec seat. Running a party means a great deal of power. I don't mean appearing as a party president, I mean being the top dog.

This election will be very interesting.