The three slates involved in the upcoming Associated Students, Inc., elections re-enforce the old adage: If you want a friend in politics, get a dog.

Over the course of the last two weeks, the Vision and Support US slates have lost members of their prospective campaigns to the Students First slate.

Artemio Pimentel, presidential candidate for Vision, was hit first, when he found out the Vision candidate for the director of Business, Liz Markey, was leaving to run for the vice president of Finance for Students First.

“My sense was that she might have wanted a higher position or an all-Greek slate,” Pimentel said. “She was an asset to the Vision slate.”

Pimentel said that because Joe Devlin, presidential candidate for Students First, was running on an empty slate he was able to offer higher positions which were already occupied on the other slates.

“Here comes Joe Devlin, ?I have a completely empty slate?,” Pimentel said.

Despite Markey?s departure, Pimentel is confident that voters will recognize that Vision has the edge over the other slates because of its experience.

“I really honestly believe experience is really important in ASI,” Pimentel said.

Markey said she left Vision after meeting with Devlin and discussing the issues.

“Everything I wanted to do, he wanted to do. We were on the same page,” Markey said. “That was the main thing that brought me over to (Students First).”

Markey said if she would have remained with Vision she would have had to vote for Students First.

“There is no way I could sit on the Vision slate and vote for someone else,” Markey said.

The week before Spring Break, Hans Weichhart, presidential candidate for Support US, learned that the man who was an advisor to his campaign, David Sommers, was jumping ship to Students First to run for the vice president of University Affairs.

Weichhart said that Sommers simply saw an opportunity and seized it, but went as far as to say that Sommers betrayed Support US.

“He infiltrated the slate. It?s a huge case of betrayal,” Weichhart said. “I don?t know whether it was intentional or not.”

But Weichhart said that it is not enough to hinder Support US?s campaign.

“It has gotten us down because we have plenty of pride and enthusiasm,” Weichhart said.

Sommers said he joined the campaign at the request of Weichhart and that in the early stages of the campaign things were going fine.

“I was originally working with Hans and I was absolutely dedicated to working with Hans until I started working with his team,” Sommers said.

Sommers said he left Support US because his experience in prior ASI elections was not being utilized.

“They had several people advising them?they didn?t want the advice of anyone besides themselves,” Sommers said.

Sommers said that by the time he decided to run for the vice president of University Affairs for Students First, he was not active in the Support US campaign.

“Support US had really blocked my involvement before I had really been involved in Joe?s campaign,” Sommers said.

Devlin is excited about adding Markey and Sommers to his slate and has his own feelings about why they left.

“They are both highly qualified individuals for their positions. They are knowledgeable about campus issues,” Devlin said. “I think they both left for very personal reasons. They saw things that were happening in and around their slates and they didn?t agree with it.”

Specifically, Devlin said, Markey left Vision because she did not feel support for the issues she felt were important to Sacramento State students.

Devlin said Sommers didn?t leave Support US for ideological reasons.

“Dave left (Support US), his reasons weren?t issue based, they were personal based,”

Devlin said. ” They were dysfunctional, there was mistrust, he didn?t see a cohesive group, he saw many individuals.”