Brandon Bishop has been elected the next president of Tempe Undergraduate Student Government.
With 50.71 percent of the vote, the Bishop platform beat the Aundrea DeGravina ticket, which received just above 49 percent of the vote.
However, the result will not be official until the Associated Students of ASU Supreme Court case, Arena v. Ruben, is resolved. The case's petitioner, the DeGravina ticket's vice president of services Alex Arena, claims the Bishop ticket was in violation of elections code for using an app code developed by the DeGravina ticket.
Bishop's victory was hard fought — he had a plurality of the vote in the last round of elections, but not a simple majority, so he and runner-up DeGravina faced each other in a runoff election.
The runoff's voting polls opened Wednesday morning and closed by midnight.
"I'm trying to take everything in," Bishop said. "I have so many people I need to call and thank. I need to eat — I haven't eaten since last night."
However, he is not hesitating to get to work, and plans to head to the office as soon as possible, he said.
"I want to get started," he said. "I'm going to start on hiring right away, and have a sit-down conversation with my team."
Bishop attributes much of his victory to his vice president of policy elect, Kenzie Johnson.
"I think it was the way that we organized," he said. "Kenzie is a political mastermind. She really brought her grassroots training."
However, DeGravina did not hand Bishop the presidency — in fact, she significantly closed the gap between the two compared to the last round of voting.
"I think a lot of (the closeness of the vote) had to do with other tickets getting behind us," DeGravina said.
Her ticket previously received the endorsement of two withdrawn presidential candidates, Grady Eldridge and Niko Vlastos.
"Fifty-something votes is very close," DeGravina said. "It shows it was a very competitive race, and I think that's a good thing.
She's not sad about the results, she said, but rather happy for the experience she had in campaigning. Although she's a sophomore, she said she does not anticipate a return to student government next year.
"Bummer, yes, but I have two more years," DeGravina said.
Reach the reporter at Arren.Kimbel-Sannit@asu.edu or follow @akimbelsannit on Twitter.
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