Two more candidates have joined the Gallente Presidential race in recent weeks. Bourynes Governor Alix Moreau has declared her intention to run while giving the keynote speech at a robotics symposium held in the Lirsautton I - CreoDron Factory. Moreau’s bid is being backed by the newly formed Autonomist party, a federal offshoot of the Intaki Autonomists whose flagship issue is the greater empowerment of local authorities. Though Moreau’s more radical views are not shared by all Autonomists, they have thrown their support behind her in hopes of riding her surging popularity to success.
The final candidate to declare is the rising Senate star, Lucas Tenzin. Tenzin announced his candidacy via a Federation-wide holocast. Running as an independent without party affiliations, Tenzin hopes to bring the “humanity first” policies that have won over his home region of Everyshore to the rest of the Federation.
With three relative unknowns holding the fate of the Federation in their hands, the Scope has dispatched our own Johanna Marqoso to uncover all she can about these very different figures in our new interview series, Presidential Profiles.
Presidential Profiles: Lucas Tenzin
When I think of a presidential candidate interview, I think of high-profile locations. Luxurious campaign yachts, aptly named Presidential suites, stately halls. So while I was intrigued when the Tenzin campaign arranged for me to join him at an ore refinery, I was also a little disappointed.
“Most of these workers are second or third generation.” Senator Lucas Tenzin told me while refinery union members nodded in agreement. “Their sweat, their family’s sweat, has been extracted from every ounce of minerals this facility pumps out for over thirty years. Now the owners want to lay off 60% of the workforce and ship them out. That ain't right.”
Rapturous applause followed; these are the Senator's base after all. Lucas Tenzin is a military veteran who came to office after campaigning for labor rights throughout his home region of Everyshore. Tenzin earned the loyalty of his constituents on picket lines and veteran outreach centers, working his way from local welfare campaigns to the Senate floor.
After speaking with each and every union member present, I sat down with the Senator for a conversation in the refinery breakroom. While we shared vending machine coffee, he apologised for the wait, saying that “I respect your publication and its readership, but who knows when I will have the chance to meet with these people again.”
Tenzin joined the military at the age of eighteen. He received a Heart of Freedom medal for his service, but when I bring it up, he waves dismissively. “That I am here today is not thanks to any kind of heroism on my part; it is thanks to good doctors and an abundance of luck. If one of these refiners were to experience an accident with similar consequences, their fate would be very different.”
Few could doubt Tenzin’s interest in the needs of the Federation worker, but his critics have said his interventions on their behalf point to an anti-innovation attitude. “Anti-innovation is the kind of mud people love to sling when you call them on their nonsense,” Tenzin said, an eyebrow cocked as he leaned back in his chair.
“Without the innovations of Gallente scientists, I would not even be sitting here right now. Instead of being dead, I have a heart that can beat up to six times faster than a baseline human, lungs that require half the air, and an eye that can see infrared.” Tenzin received over thirty-seven separate augmentations after nearly dying when his ship exploded.
“I am not anti-innovation; I just think some people are pointing in the wrong direction. Why invest in smarter robots when the infirm would rather transfer into an Upwell clones than remain in the Federation? During my first tour, I fought Rogues in the Drone Regions, and none of them seemed very keen to make my life better. We have already been gifted with the greatest intelligence our cluster has to offer; we should be investing in the bodies that house them.”
When asked what he learned in the service, Tenzin responds, “That when someone shouts duck, you listen, to keep your fusion battery contact points clean, and that war is not something you do on a whim.”
I changed topics to raise one of the main talking points of this election cycle: the autonomy or independence of Intaki. Tenzin had already returned to civilian service before President Aguard ordered the controversial invasion of Intaki. When asked what he would have done in her place, the Senator loses some of his trademark directness, “In the service, you learn wars are not something to start on a whim. I was not a fan of Aguard or her way of doing business, but what has already happened cannot be easily undone.”
The Senator’s campaign has sought to frame him as a bastion of Federal unity, but the issue of local autonomy promises to become one of this election's hot-button issues. “I hope the people of Intaki will continue to choose the protections and privileges of life within the Federation,” he continues, “balancing the value of local autonomy with Federal protection has always been a delicate act.
“My parents were born on Tei-Su in Lirsautton,” Tenzin explains, “It is a place with incredible natural preserves, beautiful architecture, and the best damn curry sauce in the Federation. But they chose instead to live in a poor mining colony in the barren wastes of Aclan VI because there, no one called them ‘Jing Ko’, only ‘neighbor’.
“I love to read history. Across New Eden, we see the same story on repeat. People live on one island, they meet people from another island, and they start throwing rocks at each other over the fish that swim in the middle. Time goes on, islands become continents, planets, star systems… but the story remains the same.
“The Federation was one of the first times we as a species stopped and said, hey, what if we didn’t fight over the fish? What if we share them instead? What a beautiful idea that was. But to keep that idea alive, we have to focus on the whole, not just our personal domains. Otherwise, we’re just back to being a bunch of islands with too many rocks and not enough fish.”
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