Election night on Nov. 3 has come and gone with many people having something to take away from it. The president of the Young Democratic Socialists of America on campus, Delaney Reynolds, is one of those people.
Reynolds is a senior psychology major on campus, and explains that she initially didn’t know about the club, but joined and is now the president. With the results in from midterms, she says that she feels that things went well.
“I think the election went really well, and I’m not surprised by the blue tsunami that happened across the country,” Reynolds says. “Locally, I was working on Isaiah Harris’s campaign for Kansas House District 3, and unfortunately he did not win but it was close with about 210 votes.”
Reynolds explains that it was a great accomplishment for their campaign seeing as Harris was running against an established Republican, DJ Perry, and has just started politics
“Somebody labelling themselves as a socialist and only losing by 210 votes, that shows that our community is at least interested in the DSA as a concept,” Reynolds says.
Gavin Caldwell, Republican activist, and previous campus president for turning point USA at K-State, had some opinions of his own about the election.
“While I’m not familiar with Crawford County and how they did in the midterms, being from Riley County, I know that a lot of blue was represented,” Caldwell says. “We still have our House Representative that was voted for and has retained the Republican side, though.”
Caldwell says that county elections are important, and that more people need to be educated, especially college students, about who they’re voting for.
“People knew about Roger Marshall and Adam Hamilton during the election, but when they go to their polling places, they just see Republicans and Democrats, and they just vote for their party rather than knowing who they’re voting for.”
Caldwell also says that he has frustrations with his own party regarding turnout.
“Republicans suck about showing up at midterms; it’s just a known fact,” Caldwell says. “It’s just disappointing to see that people who say they’re very pro-politics and want to be involved, are not showing up in a crucial election.”
Sally Harryman, president of the Crawford County Democrats, feels the opposite about her party, stating that voter turnout among Democrats all comes down to how hard they’ve worked this election cycle.
“I don’t want to say it’s surprising about the turnout, because we’ve been working hard for a long time,” Harryman says. “However, in every single county in our district, the Democratic margins by what we won or lost by has improved because there has been just way more voter turnout.”
Harryman was optimistic about the number of Democrats won across the nation, though.
“I mean, I knew there would be some, but I never thought in a million years that it would be so many,” Harryman says. “The exchange has been crazy.”
The Collegio did reach out to the Crawford County Republicans and did not hear back.
When it comes to the election midterms nationwide, Caldwell added on, saying that he thinks Republicanism is still around.
“If you look at our history, we find that when Republican presidents are in office, at midterms you find that it swings the other way,” Caldwell says. “So, I wasn’t necessarily surprised by that.”
“You had the election save act that passed, though, which are very conservative ideals,” Caldwell says.
Regardless of political affiliation, Reynolds believes that people deserve to have the resources to live in dignity.
“I think recognizing that people need equity is important, and some people may need more resources than other people do,” Reynolds says. “So, let’s meet people where they’re at.”
