The Insider has learned that Alex Bores ’13 has won the Student-elected Trustee Election.

After a campaign that began with a rap video, Bores primarily contended with candidate Nate Rosen ’13, canvassing the campus for what became a surprisingly intense, and at times heated, Trustee campaign. Bores, the president of Cornell Students Against Sweatshops, emphasized his experience with labor action as an example of his ability to get sh– done if elected.

Bores campaigned on the platforms of increasing transparency between the administration and the Cornell community, referencing the Africana move and the budget cuts of various programs like Theatre and Modern Greek. He also emphasized the importance of student mental health – though that wasn’t unique. It’ll be interesting to see if he can survive his own commitment to go to every UA and SA meeting, and something about conflict minerals.

Also, the Sun is now reporting he has a ‘campaign manager‘. At least the class of 2012 knows who their Commencement speaker will be.

Karl Rove began his speech in Call Auditorium today with a story about riding in George H.W. Bush’s boat, which the ex-president pushed up to 54 mph for as long as possible until the secret service agents following began to fall out of sight. Rove then said he’s had a “damn difficult” time giving up swearing for Lent.  It was an appropriate introduction for an hour-long talk in which Rove held a matter of fact and often humorous tone as he discussed the future of 2012 Republicans and the faults of the Obama presidency.

In an event sponsored by the Cornell College Republicans, Rove, the ‘Architect’ of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, told a room packed with faculty and students that the economy and job production would be the biggest issues to address for the 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

“This is the first election in modern times in which there is no clear frontrunner for the Republicans,” Rove pointed out.  “They all have the same three challenges. What’s their narrative? Why shouldn’t it be Obama? Why should it be them?” People want to know, he said, “are you going to be able to bring us together at the end of this? They’re going to have to do something to convince people they’re up to the job.”

Rove said that the American people are looking for a candidate who will be able to bridge the gap between the Left and Right. Obama, he said, portrayed himself as an ‘American state’ candidate, but once elected, acted as a ‘blue state’ president that operated in strict opposition to the Republican Party.

Though he did not mention a likely winner for the Republican presidential nomination, Rove touched on the issues that will be of the greatest importance.

Government spending and the nation’s deficit are “bound up together in a toxic stew for 2012,” he said. “At this rate, deficit will double by 2012 to 80% of GDP. We’re on the same way as Greece except on steroids.”

Rove heavily criticized Obama’s healthcare overhaul, which he said has failed massively and caused business owners to fire employees.

“It’s not just the little guys who are doing this.” Rove said he spoke with a restaurant chain owner with over 100,000 employees who said he’s going to “’get rid of all my insurance coverage, and I’m going to start with me.’ Because it’s too expensive.”

“The government has done such a lousy job signing people up for healthcare and their solution is to come up with another lousy plan for the government to sign people up,” he said. “This is Bernie-Madoff style economics.”

For a man who students protested against outside the auditorium, Rove cracked jokes about Cornellian feelings towards Harvard and retained a jovial manner when a woman in the audience stood up and yelled after displaying what he described must be an illness because her middle finger kept going up every time he looked at her. He also blamed vitriolic political speech not on Fox News, who he said “had done a good job on the opinion side of giving a balance,” but Keith Olbermann, who he chastised for stomping on The Cornell Review during his visit earlier this month.