Zeidman wins runoff election
By Danny Gillham
Staff Reporter

Nearly two weeks after the initial election, candidate Jay Zeidman was voted the new Student Government Association president Friday.

Zeidman, a junior political science and economics major, defeated Blake Eason in Friday’s runoff election by a 825-to-445 margin.

“I am just glad that everyone continued to turn out,” Zeidman said. “It’s amazing in a third-time voting, and on a Friday, that almost 1,300 people would come out and vote.”

Freshman business major Patrick Flynn said he responded to an e-mail encouraging students to vote. Though he had not been following the election scandal, friends who knew about the candidates persuaded him to vote, he said.

He said the elections are important because the SGA president voices students’ opinions and influences some of the choices the university makes.

Eason, a junior finance major, said he thinks his voter support fell because it was the third election, and it was done on a Friday. However, the vote was necessary because SGA needed to move on as soon as possible, he said.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for me, but we as SGA need to unite,” he said. “We have been through a lot, and we need to work to begin to restore our image.”

Eason had edged Zeidman by a 798-to-795 margin in the original Nov. 11 election. However, campaign violations against Eason and Zeidman resulted in Elections and Regulations Chairman Nick James calling for a new election for the presidency.

In the new election, Zeidman and Eason were once again the top two candidates, with Zeidman having the most votes.

Candidates Jason Ruth and Anthony Oppermann finished third and fourth respectively in each vote.

A drop in the amount of votes also occurred between the three elections. While 2,372 students voted in the Nov. 11 presidential election, only 1,723 voted Nov. 19.

Senior speech pathology major Katie Rainosek, said she did not vote in any of the elections but followed the campaign.

“It makes me feel uneasy voting for someone who is involved in a possible scandal,” Rainosek said. “I felt that none of the candidates were qualified enough to get my vote.”

SGA adviser Larry Markley said the drop in votes for the runoff election was the result of the weekend and bad publicity in the papers, but more importantly due to lack of advertising.

“We probably should have gone back and brought out the inflatable characters and all that,” Markley said. “I think everyone got tired of the election for the same position, and interest kind of waned.”

Markley said the election code, which caused confusion with its wording throughout the election, will be looked at beginning this week.

“Nick (James) and I are going to look over where we saw the most problems in relation to the election code,” Markley said. “We will then pass those on to whoever is the new (elections and regulations) chair, and have them find out what is necessary to change.”

Zeidman said he will now begin to work on rebuilding the trust between the student body and SGA.
“Most students don’t know what we do,” Zeidman said. “They have read about the violations in the paper and may think we are doing (SGA) to put on our resume. It’s not because we really want to make changes that will benefit TCU.”