THE RESULTS ARE IN!
Obama, Hales and Fritz emerge victorious after intensely fought election battles
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Portland University Portland StateState University Friday, Nov. 9, 2012 | vol. 67 no. 21
Voters choose Hales Kaela O’Brien Vanguard Staff
After enduring nearly a year and a half of campaigning, Portland has elected its new mayor. Not long after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, as voting in Portland came to an end, it became clear that Charlie Hales had bested candidate Jefferson Smith with 62 percent of the vote. “I am excellent!” Hales answered when asked how his night was, barely audible over the joyous crowd celebrating his win at Southwest Portland’s Holocene bar and music venue. “We obviously ran a great race!” After pulling in front of Eileen Brady earlier, candidates Jefferson Smith and Charlie Hales had been running a tight race. In early October, police reports dating back 19 years surfaced, revealing that Smith had hit a girl in the face with a closed fist. Smith, who was a 20-year-old student at the University of Oregon at the time, admitted to striking the then-18year-old woman. This new information about Smith, paired with the discovery that his driver’s license had been revoked seven times in the past, led to a distinct decrease in public support. By Monday, Nov. 29, it was clear that Hales was pulling ahead. The Oregonian released a statement based on their polls revealing that Hales held a 20 percent lead over Smith. As a city councilor for more than a decade, Hales tackled public transportation by expanding light rail, developing the streetcar and improving bicycle routes.
See Hales on page 4
Obama wins second term Carries 53.3 percent of the Oregon vote Ravleen Kaur Vanguard staff
It was an early night after all. Although many people were bracing for a rehash of the 2000 presidential election—lawyers, litigation and recounts in tow—President Barack Obama won a second term with a clear victory of 303 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206, with Florida still too close to call. As of Wednesday morning, the president held 50 percent of the popular vote to the former Massachusetts governor’s 48 percent, with more than 2.6 million votes separating the two. Shortly after networks projected that the president would carry Oregon, the crucial battleground state of Ohio broke for the incumbent, confirming a result that seemed increasingly likely as the night wore on. The final outcome was largely consistent with recent state-level polls, said Portland State political science professor Chris Shortell. “Obama held small but significant leads in battleground states. Romney had a very narrow path.” Other PSU professors agreed with that Obama’s reelection was predictable. “Despite the rhetoric of a close election, the polls didn’t show that,” communications professor Lee Shaker said, adding that he puts credence in the mathematics of the polls. Both professors credit youth turnout as an essential component of the president’s victory. “There was a lot of talk about whether or not young voters would be persuaded to come out,” Shaker said. Exit polls showed that turnout percentage for voters between the ages of 18 and 29 up from 2008. “This speaks to a youth
Daniel Johnston/VANGUARD STAFf
Students Dave Coburn, Chris Dollar, LIam Leaf Zuk and Spencer McNett respond to the news that Obama has won on Tuesday night.
demographic that is taking politics seriously, that feels it is impacted by national politics,” Shaker said. Voters under 30 broke for Obama 60 percent to Romney’s 36 percent. “I think that young voters made up a very important part of Obama’s voting coalition,” Shortell said. In Oregon, 81 percent of registered voters cast their ballots, according to the office of the secretary of state—higher than the national average. Obama carried 53.3 percent of the statewide vote to Romney’s 43.5 percent—a margin that, while commanding, is noticeably smaller than his 16-point victory in the state four years ago. Third-party candidates received roughly 3 percent of the total vote. Obama’s lead was enormous in Multnomah County—75.6 percent
of voters cast their ballots for the president. Romney received 21 percent of the vote. “What you really saw was a systematic and thorough organizing, county by county. It was the mobilization of voters,” Shaker said. Local Democrats expressed a view that voters were responding to a contrast between the two candidates. “The American people as a whole respond to a message that tells them what you plan to do. I think the Romney campaign did not tell us that. We don’t like to vote for unknowns,” said Susan Hagmeier, a spokeswoman for the Multnomah County Democratic Party. “President Obama laid out a vision of not only wanting to be president but explaining why he wanted to be president,” Hagmeier said.
Professors pointed to the challenges facing Republicans as they moved forward. “Solving the difficulties with young voters and Hispanic voters is critical to the future success of the Republican Party,” Shortell said. “I expect that the social issues are pretty substantial to winning over young voters in particular.” Conservative organizations and students expressed disappointment, noting that the status quo remained unchanged. “I just have to wonder how the electorate can vote so nothing changes—the same president, the same House, the same Senate,” senior Michelle Reed said. “Unless someone makes a positive move, I’m afraid it will be business as usual. Somebody has to humble down.”
Portland State hit hard by server failure Many systems offline for more than six hours Kaela O’Brien, Andrew Lawrence and Josh Kelety Vanguard Staff
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Computer labs in the library sat empty on Wednesday after a campus-wide server failure crippled Internet access.
The Portland State campus was paralyzed Wednesday afternoon when a power malfunction shut down the university’s main server. Around 3 p.m., the Fourth Avenue Building Data Center suffered a catastrophic, multi-unit failure to its local Uninterruptible Power System fabric, Information Technology Director Janaka Jayawardena said.
The localized power outage caused the Internet, email, Desire2Learn, data storage and Wi-Fi to fail, said Scott Gallagher, PSU’s director of communications. Technicians arrived on campus at 6:30 p.m. to assess the problem. By 9:30 p.m., two of the three systems had been repaired. PSU technicians were then given the green See outage on page 2