1. What has been your most exciting contribution to your candidate’s campaign?
College Democrats: Knocking on doors and getting out the vote for Sen. Obama and candidates up and down the ballot. We met our goal of reaching over 60,000 voters by spending every weekend in Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. We slept on floors, went without showers and survived eight-hour bus rides to make change happen.
College Republicans: Making 11,000 contacts in Pennsylvania, canvassing in Virginia every weekend since September, and deploying to Ohio and Colorado on the 72-hour task force on the eve of the election have been our most exciting contributions to the McCain campaign.
2. What was the lowest point in your candidate’s campaign?
CDs: The worst part was probably the post-GOP convention bounce for McCain. After four days of unfiltered Republican cheerleading, it looked as if our lead was slipping away. Fortunately, once the media focus became more balanced, Americans refused to let the tired tactics of the past eight years guide their choice for who leads the next four.
CRs: The lowest point was June 2007, when every pundit had written off the McCain campaign, only for John McCain to come back and clinch the nomination. Since then it has been a series of high points, which will culminate in victory this Tuesday.
3. Which of your candidate’s opponent’s attacks did you find the most unfounded?
CDs: It’s hard to choose since so many of McCain’s attacks crossed the line, but the most incendiary was probably his desperate attempt to tie Obama to figures from his past like Bill Ayers. It was callous, offensive and nakedly unfair, and it rightfully cost McCain dearly in his favorability ratings.
CRs: That John McCain is somehow George Bush in disguise. If anything, Barack Obama is Nancy Pelosi in drag. Barack Obama has voted with her 97 percent of the time. For the record, President Bush’s job approval ratings are higher than Nancy Pelosi’s.
4. Which of your candidate’s attacks against their opponent did you find the most unfounded?
CDs: Ridiculing McCain for being computer-illiterate was unnecessary. Though it was aimed at proving a larger point, it came across as overly condescending.
CRs: John McCain has run an honest campaign with honest appraisals of Barack Obama’s misguided proposals and rookie naiveté.
5. If you win, how do you plan to celebrate?
CDs: DRINK! Then we’ll get back to fulfilling our commitment to the mantra “Change Begins at GW” by organizing projects to lobby the few Republicans left in Congress on issues of critical importance to our generation and do our part to make change happen.
CRs: We’re throwing a huge victory party on Tuesday night in the Marvin Center Grand Ballroom, and we’ll be up all night celebrating John McCain and Sarah Palin’s historic victory.
6. If you lose, how are you going to mourn?
CDs: DRINK! But seriously, if we blow this one, you don’t want to be anywhere near us.
CRs: We’re focused on victory. We’ll be campaigning up until the last polls close and then celebrating.
7. Which state do you think will be the most highly contested?
CDs: It’ll probably come down to Ohio again, just because it’s historically very close, and it’s one of the few states McCain and Obama both have a fair shot at winning. The bottom line is that Obama can lose it and make up for it in the South or Mountain West; if McCain loses it, he’s done for.
CRs: Pennsylvania. Last weekend the GW College Republicans knocked on 4,000 doors and made 7,000 phone calls. The response for the McCain-Palin ticket was overwhelmingly positive and internal polls show John McCain tied with or leading Barack Obama. We think this will be a big pick-up for the McCain campaign, but it will be close.
8. Do you think your candidate’s opponent ran an honorable campaign? Why or why not?
CDs: Unfortunately McCain chose too often to take the low road and run a dishonorable campaign. McCain went from promising an issue-based campaign to spouting off on unfounded allegations against Obama. The fact that he contracted the same firms and people who sullied his good name in 2000 to help him win in 2008 says it all.
CRs: No. Barack Obama lied about the kind of campaign he was going to run. Sen. Obama said that if he clinched the nomination, that he would sit down with John McCain and determine how they could honor the federal campaign finance system and run their respective campaigns at equal levels of funding. Barack Obama is running a campaign based on 30-second sound bytes and has spent a quarter of a billion dollars attacking John McCain.