Guo officially suspends treasurer campaign with intent to run for EVP

By Brian Lin     2/18/20 10:53pm

The Student Association Senate confirmed candidate Kevin Guo’s decision to suspend his campaign for SA treasurer on Monday, removing him from the first round election ballot and freeing him to run for SA external vice president during the second round of elections in April, according to Guo. 

“The [SA] Senate approved the new ballot, which does not have me listed as a candidate for SA treasurer,” Guo said. “I am [now] eligible to run for EVP because I rescinded my campaign for that position, and the SA constitution states that ‘candidates must only run for one SA position.’” 

SA Director of Elections Libby Atkins did not respond for comment at the time of this article’s release. 

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Guo, a Will Rice College junior, was previously one of the two candidates in the SA treasurer elections, the only contested race for an SA position before the write-in campaign for internal vice president on Sunday, according to the original SA elections ballot.

Although he has yet to release his platform, Guo said he plans to campaign for EVP with a focus on improving SA communication and connecting residential college leaders. The EVP race was postponed to the second election round after no candidates submitted to run for the position in the initial election round. 

As of now, the SA treasurer race will be uncontested. John Cook, a Will Rice sophomore and the current SA deputy treasurer, said he is running on a platform of improving awareness of SA funding opportunities and revamping the funding process. 

“I’ve been working with Christina [Lee, the current treasurer] pretty much all year. We’ve been talking about my potential transition to treasurer,” Cook said. “A lot of what the treasurer does is very procedural and just following the guidelines set by the [SA] constitution.”

Guo said he retracted his campaign for treasurer because he realized his experience, such as serving as Rice Undergraduate Biosciences Society external vice president, made him better suited for the role of EVP. 

“When I was talking with Christina, she mentioned something like interest rates. So I was like ‘Oh, I know interest rates’ but in terms of using those to deal with actual finances, John Cook definitely has more experience in that aspect,” Guo said.

Potentially five other students are interested in running for EVP in the second round, according to Ashley Fitzpatrick, a Martel College sophomore and a write-in candidate for IVP. 

“After the ballot was presented, and it was confirmed that there's no one running for EVP, there was really sort of big talk of people running,” Fitzpatrick said. “So it will be really interesting to see what ends up actually happening.”

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