By Colby Itkowitz
Political activism picked up momentum across the state over the past few weeks, preparing New Yorkers for the Super Tuesday democratic primary.
At the University, visits from Sen. John Edwards and Sen. John Kerry’s daughter delivered the campaign to students’ backyards.
“It was great to see members of the Democratic party on campus, discussing the views of their respective campaign and most importantly encouraging the students of Hofstra to go out and vote,” said James Wilson, senior political science major who voted for Kerry on Tuesday.
Sweeping the state by 60 percent of the vote and securing support from top party leaders like Sen. Hillary Clinton, Kerry has essentially solidified his place as the 2004 Democratic nominee. Despite Howard Dean’s early connection to the college generation and Edwards’ boyish good looks, Kerry emerged as the most electable, and for many Democrats, the most likely to beat President George Bush.
“Under any other normal conditions I would clearly vote on specific policy views and issues, but the object is to get Bush out of office, and we need to rally around the best candidate,” junior entrepreneurship and finance major Andy Valentin said. “Frankly voting for any other candidate would have been a step closer to repeating the last four years.”
Republican Bush supporter Kevin Love, a junior political science major who couldn’t vote because of the state’s closed primary system, believes the Democrats made a mistake in choosing Kerry as their candidate.”I think Bush will squash Kerry,” Love said, who had hoped Dean would obtain the nomination. “I like a challenge, a good fight. It will now be a push over.”
Jamie Stone, junior public relations major, agreed Kerry wasn’t the best choice, she voted for Edwards.
“I was disappointed,” Stone said. “Not because I think Kerry would be a bad president, but because I think in the long run Edwards had a better chance at beating Bush.”
Stone said she would still vote for Kerry in the general election.
Despite the “lesser of two evils” sentiment carrying over from the 2000 election, liberal Skye Hilton, junior film major, will not vote for Kerry even if he wants Bush out of office.
“I’m not gonna bow down to the candidate the media expects me to vote for,” Hilton said. “I honestly have a large problem with the two main political parties.”
Even when Dean’s face shone on every magazine cover as the inevitable front runner before the Iowa caucus, Saundra Dobbs, junior psychology and political science major, campaigned for Kerry in New Hampshire.
“When I went to New Hampshire, I made a conscious effort to work for the person I believed in, not the person who was going to win,” Dobbs said. “It’s really exciting that now the person I believe in is the person who is going to win.”
Dobbs continued her politics in New York, helping Kerry to obtain 69 percent of the vote in Nassau County.
Currently, junior biology and political science major Heather Gibbons is in the process of reactivating the Hofstra College Democrats to rejuvenate activism throughout the campus.
“Getting strong democrat groups up and running at the University will definitely have an influence on the upcoming presidential election,” Gibbons said. “Our goal as the Hofstra Democrats is to get more college students enthusiastic about politics and about getting Kerry into the White House.”