This is a version of an article from The Daily Texan hosted by Matt Hill Comer (Fair Use of Copyrighted Material) for the benefit of visitors to his site.
To see the original article click here

Student Regent Brian Haley, right, shakes hands with State Senator Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, on May 1. Haley recently co-founded NexGen, a student political action committee, which a spokesman said would only support Republican candidates.

Students start PAC for conservatives

Victoria Rossi

Posted: 7/24/06

A group of campus conservatives have formed the University's only student political action committee and are sitting on nearly $10,000 in possible donations for November's upcoming elections.

Almost all of the nearly 30 NexGen members have served or are now serving in Student Government posts. Brian Haley, the current student representative to the UT System Board of Regents and former SG president, along with third-year law student Gerardo Interiano, formed the group after finding they didn't have enough money - $5,000 - to join a traditional PAC.

NexGen, the only UT student PAC to date, makes up a small cluster of collegiate PACs nationwide and marks a changing outlook on the best way for students to influence politics, said Grant Stanis, NexGen Finance Committee chair and SG business representative.

"There's no doubt about it that if you're a force to be reckoned with, people listen to you," Stanis said. "Some people don't like protestors because they think they're whiny and complaining. We don't want to be that."

The group aims to ensure a "good future for Texas," said NexGen spokesman Matt Stolhandsky, business honors senior. He wouldn't speculate what state policies, officials or laws would be good for the future of Texas, and said NexGen would only support Republican candidates.

"We'll make those decisions later," he said.

NexGen doesn't have a deadline for contributing to candidates by November and hasn't yet decided whether it will donate a large chunk of cash to one candidate or dole it out in small amounts to several, Stolhandsky said.

The money raised is small on a statewide level. Some PACs can drop as much as $1 million on a single candidate or issue, said government junior Nicholas Chu, president of the University Democrats.

Haley's $150 membership fee is one of three donations the PAC has received from Board of Regent members. Regents Cindy Krier and James Huffines have written the group $1,000 and $500 checks, respectively.

Other student PACs have formed in Southern California, Virginia and North Carolina, with varying budgets and causes that run the gamut from state educational financing to GLBT rights.

Matt Comer, a UNC-Greensboro political science sophomore whose GLBT PAC has raised $650 since it first formed in May, said his college's campus had been very accepting of GLBT students, but other parts of the state need to change. Joining a student group wouldn't reach far enough off campus, and nonprofit groups that have statewide reach don't allow students to spout off opinions about political issues, he said.

A group of Democratic UT students, most of them hailing from the UDems, had intended to form a PAC similar to NexGen's for the upcoming election cycle but got bogged down in paperwork and became more interested in grassroots organizing for Democratic state candidates.

"There's this divide now in politics: how effective is the grass-roots, bottom-down approach versus the top-down, political action committee approach," Chu said. "Student PACs can generate thousands of dollars, but that's pennies in the bucket for campaigns. What really gets us noticed in UDems is our huge amount of student-labor power."

NexGen's overlapping loyalties are perfectly legal, said UT System spokesman Anthony de Bruyn.

Chu said he didn't see NexGen as posing a conflict of interest for student reps.

"It's fine, because they do a really good job of separating conservative values and what's best for students," he said.