After a whirlwind week of controversy, the Focus Party dominated the SA Senate elections, winning all but two seats in the legislative body.
Over 1,400 students - the largest turnout in recent years, according to SA officials - elected Focus candidates Kelly Carmon, Mark Jacobs, Cheryl Rozario and May Wong to On-Campus seats. Robert Batdorf of the UB Voice party and Clayton Rozario, an independent candidate, also won.
All six winners in the Off-Campus Race - Robert Crowley, Dennis Febo, Thomas Martin, Deepak Patel, Khristin Pietraszewski and Daniel Smith - were Focus candidates.
Each Focus winner expressed a desire to move beyond a number of scandals that occurred this week, including a complaint from another party alleging that State University of New York Student Assembly delegates Febo, Pietraszewski, Rozario and Wong, as members of the executive branch, should not be able to run for the legislature.
"It was a fair fight," Jacobs said. "We played fair, and the ones that play fair always end up on top."
Batdorf, the only member of the UB Voice party to win, said he hopes he can represent the ideals of his party.
"I dedicate my run to all my running mates," Batdorf said. "I had a lot of faith in them. They had a lot of faith in me, and I hope to do justice to their cause."
Over 400 more students voted in this year's Senate election than last year's. SA President George Pape attributed that to SA's increased public profile.
"I'm very happy with the voter turnout," Pape said. "I think it shows that SA has reached a new level of public awareness on campus."
Mark A. Zambito, the only incumbent in the race, lost. However, he said he felt gratified by the number of people who voted.
"I was more happy to see the voter turnout so high than to see myself win," he said.
