“I FEEL SO powerful now. I’m Dick Cheney,” Will Upton says. The Weinberg junior has just been elected executive vice president of the College Republicans. “You better not try to kill me,” replies James D’Angelo, the group’s new president, who, unlike the current Republican presidential frontrunner, evokes good humor and ease in his casual mannerisms and always-accelerating speech.
After a presentation on gene patenting during the College Republicans’ weekly meeting, D’Angelo leads a scattered discussion on current events, asking members whether the topic is boring and fleetingly switching the subject from the presidential debates to Cuba.
During a College Democrats meeting, by contrast, former president Ryan Erickson guides the group through a structured discussion on healthcare and Michael Moore’s Sicko, stating facts from his encyclopedic storage of knowledge, particularly excited by the inevitable diversion of the discussion to healthcare in his home state, Massachusetts.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN Northwestern’s biggest political junkies gather isn’t merely debates within the college bubble—the challenge of talking policy, boosting appeal and raising funds makes the two groups look uncannily like the political parties on the national level.
The College Democrats enjoy more funding and prominence right now on campus, much like their counterparts across the country, but Republicans at Northwestern still manage a vigorous debate and a healthy base of support. Both groups often follow their national leaders in the issues given priority. “It’s the economy, stupid,” as Upton says of the Republican platform.
The College Republicans draw only half the members of their fellow Democrats, though that may actually be a positive sign given that our left-leaning student body isn’t exactly representative of the American public. When College Democrats Treasurer Ryan Murphy worked as an election judge for the primaries at the campus precinct that covers Allison Hall, Foster-Walker Complex, Willard Residential College and the sorority quads, just 16 out of 125 voters grabbed a Republican ballot.
College Democrats President Lily Becker says the problem is that, nationally, Republican messages are somewhat harder to sell to college students. Erickson agrees. “Events that feature Democrats and liberal issues have more appeal automatically than events that feature conservative or Republican speakers,” he says. “That’s the determining factor.”
Despite their underdog status, campus Republicans are finding new ways to publicize and expand, which sometimes makes them seem like the feistier of the two political groups. For a, well, cheeky fundraiser, they decided to sell girls’ underwear with the word “Repubs” plastered on the front and “kick” alongside an image of a donkey on the back. When she ran for vice president of publicity, Medill sophomore Catherine Mitros made puns part of her platform. “There’s been a lack of catchy phrases on our flyers in the past,” she says. “I think people will pay more attention.”
The Dinesh D’Souza speech, one of the more-controversial campus talks this year, happened to be one of the College Republicans’ most-successful events, according to its president. The group also hosted its first week-long event, Freedom Week, during Fall Quarter. Members built and subsequently destroyed a replica of the Berlin Wall on Sheridan Road to celebrate the fall of the wall, and organized a service project to sign comfort quilts, given to families of fallen Marines.
But money still matters, and the College Republicans received no funding from the Associated Student Government during Winter Quarter because of a lack of attendance at events. Meanwhile, the College Democrats rank as one of the top-funded organizations on campus, a position that it reached at least in part due to the popularity of its speakers. “ASG based a lot of funding on attendance,” says former College Republicans President Chelsea Thompson, a Weinberg junior. “It can be very frustrating when you have two predominant political views and one is getting funded ten times more than the other.”
So far this year, the College Democrats have hosted pundit Paul Begala and co-hosted Arianna Huffington, a political commentator. But the group is not exempt from financial worries. It chose to split its money among smaller events due to the difficulty of getting a top speaker such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright—the intended goal of its ASG funding.
The Student Activities Finance Board wasn’t properly notified of the changes. As a result, a complication with SAFB occurred over a campus talk by former CIA agent Valerie Plame, leading to sanctions against the group. “We didn’t fill out a form but we would have because it would’ve taken us two minutes to fill out. We still organized the event and did all the work for it, but when funding comes around again, we don’t get credit for the event,” Becker says.
THE COLLEGE DEMOCRATS inevitably bicker about issues, but at least lately they’ve maintained some common answers to the fundamental questions. “Like with universal healthcare,” Erickson says. “Some people don’t think the country’s ready for it, some people do, but at the same time, I feel like there’s a general consensus on the fact that healthcare is really messed up and we have a responsibility to do something about it. It’s a less-fundamental difference than among some Republicans.”
The College Democrats are nearly unanimous in supporting Barack Obama, with the exception of Becker, the lone Clinton groupie on the exec board. But between a self-proclaimed liberal hippie commie former president who gets overly enthusiastic about all things Massachusetts to a “Deutschophile” and a typical frat boy, the group still prides itself on its diversity otherwise.
Before the party found its frontrunner, the College Republicans looked more divided in their support for the presidential candidates. On the exec board alone, one favored Ron Paul, another was for Mitt Romney and one supported John McCain, according to Thompson. And when D’Angelo recently brought up McCain during a current-events discussion, members expressed disinterest and even aversion for the candidate. Indeed, Erickson says a number of people in the College Republicans would even consider themselves libertarian.
“The people that College Republicans attracts are probably the people who care the most and are most passionate and opinionated about the issues,” says member Doug Patterson, a Weinberg sophomore, after a regular discussion, where Upton had seized an opportunity to share a bit from conservative Barry Goldwater: “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Almost immediately, a tongue-in-cheek debate ensued on whether Goldwater took the quote from Thomas Paine, or whether maybe Paine stole the words from Cicero.
One issue over which the College Republicans overwhelmingly agree is local: Disgruntlement about the Northwestern administration. The university didn’t take up an offer by Rudy Giuliani’s field director for the candidate to speak at Northwestern, after which the director contacted D’Angelo. But after waiting for three days, the speaker had found another venue. “It was really unfortunate that the university kind of botched that,” D’Angelo says. “My theory is, they thought it was going to be a lot of extra work on their part so they were just like, ‘Oh, I’ll just tell them we can’t.’”
“That’s a great example of why we’re Republicans,” says member Sam Kleiner, a Weinberg junior. “Because we don’t believe in the capacity of bureaucracies that don’t get things accomplished.”
WHILE REPUBLICAN AND Democratic presidential candidates are busy starting smear campaigns, some members say that the two campus groups ought to work together. The two groups co-sponsored the Jeff Greenberg speech and there are signs of communication in dealing with the administration about funding. Even Upton and Erickson remain friends despite their political differences. “Ryan and I always talk, and I like to tease him and tell him he should change the College Democrats name to College Socialists. We have a good time,” Upton says.
Upton bragged to his fellow Republicans that he argued with the College Democrats at a party all night and made Erickson concede on certain issues. But even though the College Democrats contacted the College Republicans about an exec board debate, according to Murphy, the Republicans were unresponsive.
In an attempt to increase the College Democrats’ role in advocacy, Erickson encouraged members to canvass for presidential and state candidates, which he calls horribly thankless work. “I get chased off someone’s lawn, called a baby killer, swatted away with a newspaper,” Erickson says.
Thompson has worked for Congressional campaigns around the Chicago area as well, and the College Republicans hope to make campaigning trips the focus of Spring Quarter. On that point—getting students more involved in politics—their agendas do mesh, Erickson says: “We’re all students—why can’t we see the common ground in being students first?”