Council endorsements could guide students

In the last city council election, in 2007, then-freshman Alexander Pei was one of the few students to vote. The SGA had persuaded him that it was important to vote, he said, but never mentioned who to vote for.

Not knowing anything about the candidates in the hotly contested District 2 race — which was ultimately decided by five votes — Pei said he just picked the top two names off the ballot’s alphabetical list.

Student leaders and groups are hoping such a scene will not be replayed in today’s election, in which they hope students will vote in much larger numbers and will cast their ballots based on an understanding of how candidates stand on city issues. To rectify this issue, multiple university organizations have issued recommendations to students on which candidates deserve their votes.

Although The Diamondback’s editorial board has always disseminated advice on which council candidates best match student interests, it is joined this year by the UMD for Clean Energy environmental group and the Student Government Association’s liaison to the city council.

“When I was talking to students, it was clear that people wanted to vote, but were unsure who was student friendly and wanted to figure out a way to get to that information,” said Jonathan Sachs, the former SGA president who now serves as the group’s advisor to the City Council.

His experience in the SGA has put him in close contact with the current council, and Sachs said that encouraged him to share what he had learned about them, including that he considered the two District 4 incumbents to be inconsistent and unwilling to support student issues.

Diamondback Editor in Chief Kevin Robillard said he didn’t tailor the newspaper’s endorsements to specifically student issues, saying the interests of students and permanent residents are almost always aligned. But he agreed with Sachs that many students need someone to help them on election day.

“Students don’t really know much about the city council, and we like to try to inform people about where the council members stand and how that can impact them,” Robillard said. “To be honest, I’m not sure how much impact newspaper endorsements really have. But it’s part of our job to inform people.”

Some questioned whether endorsing candidates is part of the job of city council liaison, a relatively new SGA position. Sachs said he doesn’t think issuing endorsements would negatively impact his rapport with council members, because he liked all council members personally even though he disagreed with some of their politics.

The focus of the endorsements by UMD for Clean Energy took a different approach from either Sachs or The Diamondback, focusing mainly on each candidate’s environmental record and plans rather than their overall platform.

The group’s political liaison, Hilary Staver, arranged interviews with 15 of this election’s 16 candidates — spending well over an hour on each — to write up detailed summaries of each person’s views and ultimately name seven standouts.

UMD for Clean Energy has also lobbied at the state and federal level, but Staver said it’s easier to make a direct impact working at the local level — both by influencing the election and in dealing directly with whoever wins.

“You can work more closely with your [local] elected officials. They have more time to sit down and actually talk about these things,” she said. “Given the small margins that a lot of these races are won by, this could make a big difference.”

The group is also planning a rally on McKeldin Mall at 5 p.m. today to promote its endorsements; Staver hopes 100 students will march the half-mile to City Hall to vote or to catch a van to the city’s second polling station in northern College Park.

The three sets of endorsements included some overlap, most notably that none endorsed more than one District 2 candidate; UMD for Clean Energy didn’t endorse any of the three candidates.

But while these groups are targeting their message at the city’s student population, its permanent residents are also taking note of the endorsements.

Lourene Miovski, an environmental activist in northern College Park, said she heard from a neighbor that UMD for Clean Energy had endorsed Fazlul Kabir in District 1 after Kabir said so on his campaign’s blog.

Miovski recalled a dormant debate she and some neighbors had with Kabir several years ago over the widening of Edgewood Road and cuts to school bus service to the Al-Huda School there — she accuses him of putting convenience over environmentalism by not promoting mass transit. She also said other candidates did more “heavy lifting” than Kabir over the years in lobbying the county to be environmentally sensitive in its long-term plans.

Because Miovski thought the endorsement might have enough political clout to sway voters, she has printed and distributed about 300 flyers expressing her disapproval of Kabir’s past environment-related action and inaction.

Staver said endorsing candidates in District 1 reached beyond students, in what she called an unexpected plus for the group’s advocacy.

“We were mostly focused on students, but it’s become that far reaching. If people are paying attention off campus, that’s great. It’s going even better than we hoped,” she said. “If there’s anybody paying attention off campus, we’ve done our job well.”

bholt at umdbk at com