Carlos Barria/Reuters
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the man in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal, has waded into a dispute surrounding the election of an openly gay man as student body president at Texas A&M. The former Texas governor was apparently so alarmed by the university’s decision to disqualify Bobby Brooks’ opponent that he penned an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle this week, a move the Energy Department on Thursday assured was done in his “personal capacity.” In the op-ed, Perry railed against the campus vote, saying it “at best made a mockery of due process and transparency” and at worst “allowed an election to be stolen outright.” The true culprit behind the “stolen” election, he said, was a “quest for ‘diversity,’” which he described as the “real reason the election outcome was overturned.” Perry demanded the university’s administration “explain why they stood passively by while equal treatment was mocked in the name of diversity, and why they did not brief the Board of Regents.”
The university’s election ultimately saw Brooks, a junior economics major, defeat Robert McIntosh, the son of a Dallas-based GOP fundraiser. McIntosh had won about 5,000 votes to Brooks’ 4,200, but he was disqualified amid reports of voter intimidation and failing to disclose financial information about his campaign. Amy Smith, a spokeswoman for the university, told the Houston Chronicle the administration was “a little surprised that the secretary of energy of the United States of America would have the time and bandwidth to weigh in on a university student body president election.”