Champions keep playing until they get it right
A week ago the presidential race seemed all but wrapped up. That was until a man—no—a hero arose from the ashes of democracy. Cameron Caccamo.
You might remember Caccamo from one of his many stupol exploits. There’s his relentless live tweeting of board/SRC meetings; his infamously unsuccessful Union Board run in 2014; and his dramatic transformation from Liberal-collaborator to Blakeney-backer within a year or so (and his subsequent label as the Most Conservative Student in Australia). If you’ve painted an A-frame, bashed a lecture or printed a how-to-vote in the last half-decade, you’ve probably come across Cameron Caccamo.
And then, just two months ago, the dream died. Caccamo announced his retirement, and a single tear fell from the eyes of each and every Gronk on campus.
But it didn’t last—the Caccs is back. Caccamo is Baccamo. As for the seriousness of the campaign? Well Caccamo told Gronkwatch, he is “serious insofar as [he] handed in a nomination form”. When asked why he’s running, Caccamo stated “because it seemed like a good idea at the time”. Importantly, Caccamo also noted that he believes the ballot at the moment is incorrect, stating, “I’m challenging the ruling against joint nominations, and I plan to get Cameron Hawkins on the ballot with me”.
As we revealed last week the Camerons’ competitor, whose shit tonne of factional backing should make her favourite, is NLS’ Chloe Smith.
By three methods we learn wisdom
In other news, the Honi Soit race is a touch more interesting that originally expected, with three tickets entering the race.
Top of the ballot is Horse. Formed through a series of very recent tweets and Facebook posts, Horse seems to be something of a last ditch effort. Cut down from an initial Facebook group of 20, it has been fairly difficult to find reliable information about these equine trolls, however we are aware of significant C&S experience between founding members Max Schintler, Alex Mildenhall, Jamie Rusiti and Alex Tighe. Photos of actual horses have been circulating Gronkfeeds for the last few days, which seems dangerously close to a regulation breach, so it also seems fair to assume the Horse team could just be in it for the giggles. The real question though is whether they will pronounce Honi with an aspirated-H, to aid in the alliteration of running on Horses. Horse for Hon-i. Say that five times fast. No word yet on logo, but no points for guessing the general theme.
Second on the ballot is ‘Strip for Honi’. It seems like quite a clever title, hoping to capitalise on the success of the similarly saucy ‘Sex’ from back in 2013, but unlike Sex, this ticket is broadly composed of candidates from outside the recent Honi Soit community. Managed by Vanessa Song, who has been previously associated with NLS, the members in ballot order are: Evan Jones, Ellie Jones, Jasmine Yu, Oliver Moore, Mayura Sandrasegaran, Esther Shim, Yuping (Sunny) Wang, Madeleine Bower, Bianca Farmarkis, and Irene Oh. Farmakis is the only current reporter of the 11, which speaks to either inexperience within the team or a broad resentment towards this year’s paper. I’m leaning towards the former, but it does appear like Strip want to distinguish themselves from recent Honis. Song also told us that their campaign logo will be black on a white background. Regarding their vision for Honi, Strip stressed a “more balanced, culturally diverse and politically diverse paper.” As for factional dealing, Song expressed a willingness to pursue all avenues of support for the ticket, and would be contacting all groups in the SRC race.
And last is Scoop, a ticket made up predominantly of reporters from this year’s Honi. Gronkwatch had information on Scoop last week, along with a list of their 10 members, but we can now confirm that they will be running on the colour pink. No word yet on manager/s.
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Below is a list of all the SRC council tickets. At 54 the numbers have dropped off quite significantly from last year, which had 76.
tl;dr, Grassroots = Grassroots; BOOST = ALP, other highlights include ‘ayy lmao’ and ‘Taylor Swift for SRC’.
