For the next week, students passing through Turlington or in front of the Reitz Student Union are sure to encounter Vision Party and Change Party canvassers hoping for a “moment of your time” to pitch their platform ahead of October elections.
In the midst of this election cycle comes a new candidate: the Watch Party.
Watch Party spokesman and co-founder Alfredo Ortiz, a 24-year-old UF Latin American Studies grad student, said the party has a “very specific mission” for the Fall elections.
“Nothing matters until we have fair elections,” Ortiz said. “So our platform is focused on different aspects of what makes an election fair.”
According to Ortiz, who is running as an off-campus candidate, the three elements of fair election are access, opportunity and representation.
While he mentioned controversy over the current election map as a motivating concern, he said there are other elements of SG elections beyond the map that deny students the three elements of fair elections.
“The biggest one is that there are no polling locations on satellite campuses,” he said. “So those students are completely unrepresented in how their fees are spent.”
Watch Party off-campus candidate Robert Diaz, a 21-year-old UF sports management grad student, said he came to Watch Party after feeling disillusioned with Change Party. This was due to the creation of power-sharing agreement between Vision and Change following the results of the Spring 2023 election, in which Change won more seats than Vision.
Though Change had more seats than Vision, it lacked a majority and, thus, could not establish a quorum, leading to gridlock and a Supreme Court injunction ordering the factions to strike a power-sharing agreement.
“They split the power in half when they could have had a majority and could have got things done,” Diaz said. “So what the hell was happening then?”
According to Diaz, the Watch Party hopes to “inspire a third party movement and get more students involved in government” and break the two-party system currently dominating SG.
Speaking as a prospective senator, Diaz also said he would like to see support for more bike racks on campus, extended hours for Southwest Recreation Center and overall a more walkable, safer campus.
Watch’s election reform campaign and general aspirations to diversify SG politics could lead non-politically engaged students to get out and vote, Diaz added.
Watch Party chief of staff and co-founder Dominic Acosta Santoni, a 22-year-old UF international studies senior who previously canvassed for Change Party, also said disillusionment with SG’s political system led him to join the third-party movement.
“I felt like there was a lot of gatekeeping [in Change],” he said. “I created this party to be a bottom-up organization, not top-down.”
According to Santoni, even if Watch Party fails to win seats or only gains a few, it serves an important purpose by “shaping the political discourse” around election fairness and SG’s general political structure.
Santoni drew parallels between the Watch Party movement and Puerto Rico’s Citizens’ Victory Movement, which also championed anti-corruption sentiments and ultimately formed a coalition movement with Puerto Rico’s Puerto Rican Independence Party.
Watch Party is running 20 candidates across on- and off-campus districts.
Contact Avery Parker at aparker@alligator.org. Follow him on X @AveryParke98398.
Avery Parker is a third-year English and History major covering university affairs for The Alligator. Outside of reporting, Avery spends his time doting on his cats, reading, and listening to music by the Manwolves.
