SBP Endorsements Carry Less Weight

Seven out of the 10 candidates who received the Black Student Movement endorsement in the 1990s won the election, with the BSM endorsing 10 out of 20 winning candidates in the last 20 years.

From 1982 to 1997, 10 out of 16 candidates receiving The Daily Tar Heel's endorsement won the presidency, with the DTH endorsing the winning candidate every year from 1993 to 1997.

But times have changed. With the introduction of online voting last year and subsequent increases in voter turnout, endorsements seem less effective than they once were.

This year, Student Body President-elect Jen Daum pulled in the most votes in both the general and runoff elections despite only receiving one endorsement, from the Blue and White magazine.

"(Endorsements) are helpful, but they're not the defining factor," said Susan Navarro, co-president of the UNC Young Democrats, a group that endorsed the winning student body president candidate for the three years prior to this year.

Former Student Body President Aaron Nelson said that when he was elected in 1996, all campus groups' endorsements carried a lot of weight. "We always wanted to get as many as we could," he said.

When Nelson ran, he won endorsements from the Young Democrats, the Young Republicans, the BSM, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the DTH. Nelson said he thinks the endorsements were helpful in his campaign, largely because members of the groups that endorsed him took an active role in supporting him. "Endorsements were important when I ran, but it was even more important when the group played an active role in the campaign," he said.

The activities of a group can still be important -- the Young Democrats, who, along with the BSM, Sangam and the DTH, endorsed Daum's runoff opponent Will McKinney, went door-to-door on McKinney's behalf the night before Tuesday's elections, donning pins and encouraging students to vote.

Although the BSM did not endorse the winning candidate this year, BSM President Kristi Booker said the group's endorsement is still important and attributed its historic prominence to an efficient forum and a large membership. "Candidates have said that the forum itself is one of the most well-organized with the most challenging questions."

Despite the contributions of campus organizations to a candidate's campaign, online voting has changed the effect of endorsements, said Board of Elections Chairwoman Emily Margolis.

"When you have over 7,000 people voting, more of the voting is based on commitment from the candidate, not just what organizations think," she said.

Student Body President Justin Young, who received the Young Democrats' endorsement in 2001, also said online voting opportunities create the need for candidates to reach beyond endorsements.

"There's a lot more need to branch out to the student body as a whole, since no group covers the span of the entire campus community," he said.

Daum said she thinks her visibility on campus was a more important factor in her campaign than gaining endorsements. "I think the people working with me, the issues we talked about, a lot of person-to-person contact and our interpersonal communication helped our campaign a lot," Daum said.

But McKinney, who received 46.6 percent of the votes Tuesday, said he still thinks endorsements are essential to the campaigning process. "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the endorsements helped get us this far," he said. "I wish they had taken us farther."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.