USFSP students working for the presidential candidates in New Hampshire
Among the thousands of out of state
visitors who are descending upon New Hampshire for next week’s
first-in-the-nation primary election are 23 students from the University
of South Florida St. Petersburg.
USFSP political science professor Judithanne McLauchlan is taking her class to the Granite State to see American democracy in all of its glories – and excesses.
SPB met up with the professor and
her students late Sunday morning at Tampa International Airport, where
they would soon be departing on a Southwest flight to Manchester to
volunteer on the presidential campaigns of seven different candidates in
all.
Seven of the students will be working on the Bernie Sanders, five with Hillary Clinton, five with Marco Rubio, two with Jeb Bush, two with Ted Cruz, and one each for Donald Trump and Martin O’Malley.
“I let the students pick – I don’t
assign,” McLauchlan says about who gets to volunteer for each candidate.
“It’s an academic enterprise and students are going to learn about
presidential campaigns.” Having said that, she acknowledges that “you
really can’t go door-to-door in several feet of snow, if you really
don’t believe that this candidate shouldn’t be president.”
Interest for her “Road to the White
House” was the highest ever, she says, causing her to have to say no to
several students who wanted to be part a pivotal part of the 2016
election cycle.
The reason she held the class down to
the size that it is is due to logistics: she’s renting out two, 15-seat
passenger vans to get the students around the state. While McLauchlan
will drive one of the vans everyday to drop the students off in the late
morning after the class convenes in the morning, she has a fellow
Fulbright Scholar who is New Hampshire who will be driving the other bus
(McLauchlan was a Fulbright Scholar to Moldova in 2010, was awarded a
returning Fulbright to Moldova Summer 2012). In addition to working for
the candidates, as a group they’ll take in morning seminars from
McLauchlan, field trips to the state Capitol of Concord (to watch the
opening session of the New Hampshire State Senate), meet with state
lawmakers, and take in some town hall meetings held by some of the
candidates.
As they awaited the call to board their plane, several students expressed their thoughts about the upcoming week.
“I think he’s very outspoken,” said
Terran Winegeart, 19, regarding Donald Trump, the presumptive
front-runner in New Hampshire, who he’ll be volunteering for. “But he
has great leadership qualities, if he can control the outspokenness.”
Weingeart says he likes Trump’s plans for veterans for mental health in
general.
An aspiring attorney, he says he’s found
himself at times truly engaged in following politics, while other times
he loses interest. “Needless to say, right now, I’m into it,” he
affirms.
He also said he wasn’t sure what to
expect about the experience, but he looks forward to learning and
experiencing a lot from the 10-day trip.
Yaite Ruiz, 36, from Treasure Island, is
all in for Ted Cruz. A bilingual speaker, she’s aware that New
Hampshire doesn’t have the largest Latino community around (recent Census figures put
the Hispanic population at 3.3%) – thus there’s a perhaps need for
liaisons like herself to be used to advocate for the Texas Senator.
“My expectation is that he win the Iowa
caucus, or be one of the top candidates, and then he’ll be very close in
the race in New Hampshire on February 9,” she says.
Ruiz is also extremely excited to be in
the Northeast for the occasion. “I’ve never been to see the snow in my
life, so this is going to be the first time, I can’t wait. And I love to
volunteer. I’m an energetic person who likes to help people.”
Sitting together waiting at the gate for
the flight were classmates Alyssa Winston and Samantha Kendall, both
big time Bernie Sanders supporters.
“I think it’s crazy how Bernie is so
popular with millennials especially considering that he is the oldest
candidate!,” said Kendall, 22. “As a college student, Bernie’s plan for
free tuition is something I really support. It’s ridiculous that we live
in a society where the majority of people are essentially required to
go into debt just for higher education.”
Sitting on the opposite row of seats at
the Southwest gate was Kristina Sonstroem, who is all in for Hillary
Clinton’s candidacy.
“I want to see more women in politics,
especially the presidency,” says Sonstroem, a 21-year-old from Orlando.
“And I think Secretary Clinton is the right women for the job. I really
support her women and family centered policies.”
She’s also looking forward to cold weather and possible snow conditions.
While the Republicans have a number of
candidates barely above the margin of error in terms of their poll
rankings (Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore), the Democrats have
only one candidate that has failed to gain traction so far in this
campaign – former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
One of the worst things to happen to
O’Malley was the civic uprising in Baltimore last year in the wake of
the death of Freddie Gray. When analysts studied Baltimore, some
liberals blamed the pro-policing policies of O’Malley when he was the
mayor there from 2007-2015.
David Thompson says that’s not fair.
“if you lived in Baltimore at the time
he was mayor, because the violence and the crime was so extreme at that
time, you really had to put those strict measures in place,” says
Thompson, 18, who lived in Maryland for the first nine years of his
life. “Even though now we’re looking back at it we see some of the
race/police relations aren’t good, it’s just comparing what the
situation was at the time, there’s really no other way you could have
handled how crazy Baltimore was at the time,” he says.
All of these students and the rest will
be posting blog entries during their time in New Hampshire. You can
access that through this link: http://www.rtwh2016.blogspot.com/
As far as those Florida students hoping
to get some time in the snow, they may in luck. The 10-day forecast now
shows that there could be snow on Tuesday – the day of the primary.
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