Correction appended.
This year, Republicans Jay Edwards, Frank Hoagland, Steve Stivers, Rob Portman and Donald Trump all won their respective races. Now, so has Ryan Evans.
Evans, a junior studying political science, will be next year’s Ohio University College Republicans president. After spending this academic year as vice president of the club, Evans said he’s been preparing himself to be president for the past few weeks.
“It’s been something I’ve been looking forward to,” Evans said. “I’m definitely excited, but I’m ready to get started right away.”
After a busy year of working on campaigns and being part of the election process, the OU College Republicans are looking forward to the next political races already, and they’re preparing for elections now. Evans said even though it feels like they just finished working on some races, it’s fun to jump right back in.
“I’m most excited about our endorsement for Jon Husted,” he said. “He still has to declare that he’s running for governor, but if he does decide to run, he has our endorsement.”
Evans was elected unanimously by the group. He said since he was vice president this year, it was something he was thinking about for a long time. David Parkhill, 2016-17 OU College Republicans president, said Evans has more than enough experience to lead the club.
“We’re not as involved in the politics and campaigning as we were last year, but I see it as a good time to keep growing and campaigning,” Parkhill said. “It’s a moment to really show what we’re about as an organization as opposed to a campaign.”
On the other side, Ashley Fishwick, a junior studying English pre-law and political science, said she hopes to bring a bigger presence to campus as OU College Democrats president next year.
“I feel like there are a lot of students on campus who are liberally leaning, and they just need the opportunity to get involved,” she said. “I want Ohio University College Democrats to be that place where they can start becoming politically engaged.”
Fishwick served as the fundraising chair for OU College Democrats since January. In that role, she helped plan philanthropic events to raise money for organizations that could need help funding liberal ideals.
This past year she had started to see that politics plays into all aspects of life, and she wanted to get more involved.
“This election was extremely important for me as far as getting in politics,” she said. “I started to see the people who say, ‘I don’t get involved in politics, that’s just not my thing.’ I kind of have to wonder why because politics influences every part of our lives.”
After seeing the effects of politics on her life, Fishwick decided to get more involved in College Democrats. She said it was important to hold local representatives accountable, and she wanted to help fight whatever was going to happen during President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I just kind of took off from there,” Fishwick said. “It was a really important year for me as far as getting involved and finding sort of like my place on campus.”
Sam Miller, current College Democrats president, said nominating Fishwick to be president was an easy decision.
“I’ve never had more faith in another human being than I have had in her,” Miller said.
Fishwick hopes that the group can build up its membership next year to start preparing for the primaries and gubernatorial race.
“I’m ready to get started preparing for all the important campaign work that we will be doing and meeting all the different candidates that we’ll have,” she said.
Correction: A previous version of this report misspelled Jon Husted's name. The article has been updated to reflect the most accurate information.
