Three will vie for UNC student body president

Only three candidates remain standing in the race for student body president, as three others failed to collect the required number of signatures to appear on the Feb. 14 ballot.

Will Leimenstoll, Tim Longest and Calvin Lewis Jr. were certified Tuesday and Wednesday, making this year’s student body president race the first since 2008 to feature just three candidates.

Only Leimenstoll and Longest collected 1,250 signatures by the Tuesday deadline. Lewis met the requirement during Wednesday’s 24-hour extension.

Brian Min, Leigh Fairley and Warche Downing came up short.

The smaller field of candidates makes a runoff election, which has become a staple of student body president races, less likely than in previous years.

The last two times a president was elected with a majority from a field of more than two candidates, thereby avoiding a runoff, were 2008 and 1997.

Candidates have just two weeks of campaigning to get their message across to the student body, with an additional week added in the event of a runoff.

The candidates said the smaller possibility of a runoff could heighten the intensity of the next two weeks.

“It’ll definitely affect my sleep habits,” Leimenstoll said. “But I was involved in (Student Body President) Mary Cooper’s campaign and saw how long that dragged out. I think two weeks is plenty of time.”

Longest agreed that two weeks is enough time for students to get to know the candidates.

“It’s an excellent opportunity to get our ideas out there and engage the Carolina campus in a discussion of values,” he said.

After collecting an additional 278 signatures to become a certified candidate Wednesday, Lewis said he is excited to continue.

“The petition process only gave us an opportunity to throw paper at people,” he said. “Now I actually have the opportunity to talk to them.”

Those who failed to become certified reflected on things they could have done differently.

“I wish I had set (the online petition site) up earlier,” Fairley said. “I waited a day and a half or so because I didn’t think it was going to be effective, but I got about 150 signatures online.”

This was the first year all candidates utilized online petitioning to collect signatures.

Downing said he would have petitioned differently in hindsight.

“I would have started on Tuesday night in the (off campus) apartments when we couldn’t dorm storm,” he said. “It also could have been even better if we could have sent out emails.”

Min said it was his team’s size rather than strategy that proved unsuccessful.

“I would have gotten more volunteers early on and would have reached out more to off campus.”

In contrast to last year, this year’s campaign has seen no violations of elections law so far, said Shruthi Sundaram, chairwoman of the Board of Elections.

Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.