Oscar Castillo | News Editor
After campaigning for more than a year, bitter presidential rivals Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will learn their fate on Election Day this Tuesday.
Clinton announced she was running for president in a YouTube video April 12, 2015.
After her announcement, Clinton spent the early half of 2016 battling with fellow Democratic hopefuls, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.). O’Malley dropped out of the race on Feb. 1 and Clinton defeated Sanders by about 1,000 delegates in the primaries, 2,807 to 1,846.
Trump announced he was running for president on June 16, 2015, two days after his 70th birthday, at Trump Tower in New York. He outlasted 16 fellow Republican candidates, five of whom withdrew or suspended their campaigns before the primaries. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were the last two candidates to drop out of the race, on May 3 and 4, respectively.
“On a certain level I feel sad,” UTRGV political science Professor Mark Kaswan said about the presidential election. “I think what this election reveals, perhaps more than any that I have witnessed, is how far we have fallen from the ideals of our founders. … This election has been so far from that. It’s been an election of, kind of, an exploration of how low we can go.”
Fellow political science Professor Jerry Polinard said this election has been more about the candidates than it is about the issues.
“In all of the elections, they’ll be policy debates and they’ll be personality debates, they’ll be trustworthy debates,” Polinard said. “It’s just never been quite the nature that we are seeing between these two candidates.”
In comparison to previous presidential elections, Kaswan said this one has been more media driven.
“As Clinton’s lead has increased in the polls, stories about her emails increases,” he said. “It’s not that there’s new information, necessarily. There’s nothing really new in this thing that the FBI just announced. There’s really nothing new there. It doesn’t change the dynamics.
“But it gets all this news play. Why? Well, because as Clinton’s lead has become more solid and it becomes less newsworthy, it becomes less interesting as a news story. If she’s going to have this blowout victory, well, it’s not very interesting. What’s very interesting is when there’s controversy and conflict.”
Scandals
Clinton’s Achilles’ heel this election has been her private server as secretary of state.
FBI Director James Comey, in a letter to congressional leaders on Oct. 28, said he will reopen Clinton’s case.
On July 5, Comey said during a press briefing that although the FBI “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
Comey’s change of heart came when the FBI discovered possible evidence in Clinton’s case during another investigation.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote. “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”
This sparked outrage on the Democratic side because of the lack of evidence presented to the public so close to the election.
On June 10, 2015, the FBI began an investigation of Clinton because of “potential unauthorized transmission and storage of classified information on the personal e-mail server,” according to the FBI’s website.
Between 2009 and 2013, Clinton handled confidential and top secret/special access program levels in an unclassified personal server system.
When the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi asked for Clinton’s emails, her lawyers submitted “about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department and deleted the rest, which Clinton said were about personal matters,” according to Politifact.com.
Controversy and scandals also seem to follow Trump, a billionaire and former reality TV star, as multiple women have accused the Republican nominee of sexually assaulting them, following the release of a video in which Trump is heard bragging about groping women because he is a celebrity.
Trump has said the accusations are not true and that he plans to sue the women once the election is over.
Before this, multiple politicians, political pundits and celebrities labeled Trump a racist because of his immigration proposals.
During his presidential announcement, Trump said he would deport illegal immigrants in the U.S. and build a wall along the U.S. southern border. Earlier this year, he said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel should not hear his civil fraud case against Trump University, brought by former students, because of his “Mexican heritage.”
On the issues
Clinton and Trump have polarized views on most issues.
Trump is anti-abortion, whereas Clinton is in favor of abortion rights.
“Abortion, I’m against that,” said Susan Erosa, an accounting sophomore at UTRGV. “Maybe it’s because of my religion, but I just don’t—I mean, I want to vote for her because I don’t want Trump to win, but like, I don’t want that to go. … They’re both really bad candidates.”
Clinton favors gun control.
“I would agree with Hillary, when it comes to regulating guns,” said Rafael Gavina, a management freshman. “I just feel it’s easier for people to get guns and it’s probably more people that are going to get injured—I’m not saying guns are bad—but people that acquire guns, they’re probably not mentally stable.”
Trump is for upholding the Second Amendment.
“Circumventing the word illegal or ban or changing the Second Amendment is the same thing as nullifying it, and I feel what they’re going to try to do is write all kinds of laws that make it impossible for private ownership of firearms, any kind,” said Rolando Barron, a graduate student in biology. “And that is effectively infringing on the Second Amendment, which states explicitly in the Second Amendment of the Constitution that you can’t do.”
Clinton wants students whose families make $85,000 a year or less to be able to attend an in-state, four-year public college or university tuition-free, whereas Trump says this will only add to the national debt.
“I also feel if it was free, then the degrees, like the bachelor’s degree, will go even lower,” Gavina said. “So, I think people would have to pay some type of amount.”
Teaching & Learning Professor Bobbette Morgan said she voted based on the issues overall, not a specific one.
“I don’t have a specific issue; none of them have addressed education, which, actually, I’m a bit disappointed in, but it’s just been a horrible process this time,” Morgan said.
Asked what she would have liked to have seen, Morgan replied: “I would like them to have discussed the problems that are developing nationwide in funding higher ed, and they have alluded to at least community college being free, but neither candidate really talked about how that would be possible.”
Early voter turnout in the Valley
In early voting, 123,850 individuals had cast ballots in Hidalgo County, including 5,234 at the polling station on the Edinburg campus, as of press time Friday. In Cameron County, 53,022 ballots had been cast, including 1,008 on the Brownsville campus and 736 at Texas Southmost College.
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