Abe Matsui attempted to run for City Council in the 2012 City Council Election when he was a fourth year senior at UC Davis, due to graduate at the end of the Spring 2012 quarter. His major is Political Science with emphasis in Public Service and a minor in Contemporary Leadership.
Almost immediately, though, Matsui's Council candidacy was in doubt. It soon became clear that his campaign had ended before it began.
Mr. Matsui decided to run for city council as a student representative, seeking to bridge the gap between family driven members of the community and rowdy students. However, this decision was made just a one week prior to March 9th, the cut off date for candidates to turn in their nomination papers. While this may have worked out fine in normal circumstances, Mr. Matsui was in Washington D.C., completing the "UCDC" program at the time.
After hundreds of dollars of overnight fedexing, his voter registration card turned out to be registered to an address that did not exist within Davis, and his nomination signatures contained many students who registered to vote on the UC Davis campus, which is still an unincorporated part of the County of Yolo, not in the limits of the City of Davis. Because of its disenfranchisement, more than half of the signatures collected on his nomination form did not count, and he thus failed to receive the 20 necessary to run. Even if he had gotten enough signatures, however, his failure to be registered in Davis would have prevented him from running.
In his short run as quasi-candidate, Mr. Matsui received harsh criticism over his membership in the UCD Muslim Student Association, which was called an organization with close ties to terrorist groups.
