By Sherlyn Osorio, news editor

With less than a year to go before the next presidential election, a lot of candidates are working hard to become the new face of America and capture the attention, money, and votes of the American public. Here at Bradley Beach Elementary School, students are curious about what exactly is going on with the race.

 “There are a lot of new people, especially that dude with the really long name. I really like him,” said Henry Lleyva, an eighth-grader. 

Henry was talking about Pete Buttigieg ( pronounced boot-edge-edge). He is running to become the Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential election. Whoever wins the Democratic party nomination (during a series of primary elections between February and June) will have the opportunity to run against President Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term. (More about that later).

According to a recent Quinnipiac University Poll, the four current frontrunners are former vice president Joe  Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Bernie Sanders. (A poll is a survey of a sample of people who answer questions, sometimes over the telephone.)

According to the poll, Mr. Biden is currently in the lead with 24 percent. He has run for president twice and this will be his third time. He is known for his ability to work well with working-class voters and his popularity with the African American community.

Mr. Buttigieg is slowly rising in the polls. At 37, he’s the youngest person running for president and the first openly gay candidate. The mayor of South Bend Indiana, he is known for his high academic intelligence, which is an advantage for him. He wants to be a bridge to a new era of American politics. Mr. Buttigieg has also served in the military.  

The next candidate I will be discussing is Elizabeth Warren. A former law professor, she is 70 years old and was actually a member of the Republican party until 1996. She promises to bring “big, structural change,” meaning that will shift the power to the working people and take that power away from the huge corporations and the wealthy. She is known in the Democratic field because of her long list of policy plans, such as creating a wealth tax, canceling student loan debt for most of the borrowers, and splitting up technology companies.  

According to the research I’ve done, she is slightly slipping in popularity. She used to have 16 percent but she is down to 14 percent. 

 Close behind her is Senator Bernie Sanders, 78 years old. He has called to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities and cancel all of the country’s student debt.  On October 1, Mr.Sanders suffered a heart attack, but that hasn’t prevented him from continuing to be a candidate attempting to be the next president.  

President Trump is in hot water at this present moment due to the fact that he was impeached by Congress on December 18 for making dubious deals with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Officials say he withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine in exchange for Zelensky investigating Mr. Biden’s son and investigating a theory involving Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. (It’s complicated.)  

I interviewed several BBES students throughout my research, and their opinions are very different.

Xavier Davila, eighth grade, supports President Trump for a second term and said the impeachment proceedings were cooked up by his political enemies. 

Steven Arrieta said he would like to see anybody overthrow President Trump because of his racist policies on immigration. He said he does not know much about the 2020 race, but has seen Bernie Sanders on YouTube ads and feels that he would be a better choice. 

Haylin Pena, also eighth grade, said she is a Sanders supporter.

“He has a lot of experience and he really seems to care about people who lack a home and nourishment,” she said.

Voters will get a better idea of who the Democrats are favoring during the next few months of primary elections. In the meantime, no matter what you believe, it is important to learn as much as you can about politics, the candidates running for the next presidential election, and all of the political drama going down. We need to be well educated so when we reach the age of eighteen, we will determine who will be the new face of America by our votes. Not only must we learn about politics, but we also must respect each other. If someone is not voting for the same candidate as you are, don’t be rude. In this great democracy that we live in, you have to disagree in order to agree.