Moscona, Bishop top primary election
By ERIN LaRUFFA
Associate News Editor
With just 28 out of 3,402 votes separating them from their closet competitor, candidates Brian Moscona and Libby Bishop finished on top of Monday's primary election for Notre Dame's student body president.
Moscona and running mate Keri Oxley received 1,302 votes, or 38 percent, while Bishop and running mate Trip Foley received 1,274 votes, or 37 percent. Because no ticket received more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be a runoff between the two candidates on Thursday.
"We expected it to be close," said Moscona. "I think this just shows that there were four quality candidates."
Agreeing that the closeness of the race reflected the caliber of the tickets running, Bishop added that the primary results reminded her of another recent election.
"It's like Bush/Gore all over again," she said.
The third-place ticket of Nikki McCord and Nick Williams received 411 votes, or 12 percent. Finishing in fourth were Scott Palko and P.J. Mercanti with 395 votes, also approximately 12 percent of the total.
For the two tickets left in the race, their victories on Monday mean more campaigning in the days ahead.
"We plan to continue meeting people one-on-one and talking to them about our vision for Notre Dame," said Oxley, who is now serving as president of the Class of 2004.
Praising students for "taking an active initiative by voting," current student body vice president Moscona echoed the importance of "vision" in their campaign.
"The simple fact that we had such overwhelming support leads us to believe that our vision for an improved ND and student union is within our reach," he said.
To Moscona and Oxley's campaign manager, Tai Romero, it is important that the candidates emphasize what they have already achieved in their campaign.
"We want to bring out that we have a lot of student input," said Romero. Their campaign has received more than 1,000 ideas from their "Black Box" concept, she said, referring to black boxes on their campaign posters encouraging students to e-mail Moscona with ideas for student government. She added that their campaign also wants to make students aware of initiatives the current administration of Moscona and student body president Brooke Norton is already working on.
"I'm glad that it's close ... because it means people will have to get more involved to find out who they want," Romero said.
Bishop and Foley similarly said they plan to continue running their campaign in the same way that they have been. In particular, they plan to "encourage everyone to vote," according to Foley.
"I think I would like to see a much higher turnout next time," said Bishop.
One of Bishop and Foley's campaign managers, Kevin Berchou, agreed that their campaign wants students to vote on Thursday.
"Everyone's been working very hard to get every last vote," he said. "Ideally, everyone votes."
Berchou added that receiving The Observer's endorsement helped Bishop/Foley beat the third and fourth place candidates, while Moscona/Oxley were similarly helped by Scholastic's endorsement.
"The fact that each of the top two got an endorsement helped to distinguish us," he said.
All four tickets also received help from the dorms each candidate lives in.
"The respective candidates dominated their own dorms by a ridiculous amount" said Judicial Council vice president of elections John McCarthy.
There will be a runoff debate tonight at 7:30 p.m. in auditorium of the Hesburgh Library.
All News Stories for Tuesday, February 12, 2002
