By Barbara Bent
A debate in Lee Chapel Thursday night marks the beginning of the 2016 Mock Convention, a student-run event at Washington and Lee that takes place every four years.
The convention will culminate late Saturday afternoon, when the students will predict whom the Republican Party will select as its presidential candidate.
The tradition began in 1908, when Washington and Lee students accurately predicted that William Jennings Bryan would receive the Democratic presidential nomination that year. Thus began Mock Convention, where every four years, undergraduates predict the presidential nominee for the party out of power.
“Our real aim is to be a political research project, but we’re also looking to create an experience and get students involved,” said general Chair Andrew McCaffery ’16. “The prediction is our most important goal.”
Mock Convention is made up of five departments— general, political, communication, financial, and operations—which work together to create the spectacle each election season. The general department, led by McCaffery, oversees the entire operation.
“It’s really kind of a funny construct in that the people putting it on have never been to or seen a Mock Convention,” said McCaffery. “We’re working entirely off of historical documents and what past conventions leave behind for us.”
These binders, or “Mock Con bibles,” are a huge help when it comes to recreating the convention. Aside from referring to these documents, new leaders of Mock Convention also speak with faculty and upperclassmen who have had the chance to experience the event.
This year, Mock Con festivities will commence with a debate at 5 p.m. Thursday in Lee Chapel, sponsored by the Mudd Center for Ethics. William Galston, a governance expert at the Brookings Institution, will debate “the ethics of citizenship” with Peter Wehner, senior fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The event will continue at 9:30 a.m. Friday with a parade in downtown Lexington featuring student-made floats from the state delegations.
The remainder of the convention is divided into four sessions—two on Friday and two on Saturday—all taking place in the university’s Warner Center. Mock Con’s prediction will be announced following the last session Saturday afternoon.
“Expect the formalities and proceedings of a convention in session one. We’re really setting the stage for what the simulated exercise is,” said McCaffery.
Session one will feature strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson, political advocate Grover Norquist and politician Bob Ehrlich. Congressman Bob Goodlatte, editor Rich Lowry, political commentator Ann Coulter and former Vice President Dick Cheney will speak during session two, while session three will include former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, economist Steve Moore, pro-life activist Lila Rose, executive Garland Tucker III and Ed Gillespie, former chair of the Republican National Committee.
The final session Satu
rday afternoon will feature the keynote speaker, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Washington and Lee alum, and will end with roll call. Shortly afterwards, every state and territory delegation will announce their chosen candidate. The tallied results will determine Mock Con’s final prediction for the GOP presidential nominee.
Mock Convention boasts a strong success rate. Of the 25 times Mock Con has been held, it has made 19 correct predictions. The students have missed only twice since 1948.
The responsibility of predicting the distribution of delegates to this year’s Republican National Convention lies with Mock Con’s political department, a task co-director Kevin Ortiz ’16 described as particularly challenging because of the unconventional nature of the race.
“The most visible example has been the candidacy of Donald Trump. Almost no one took his bid for president seriously when he first announced last summer,” said Ortiz. “It has been difficult for our national research team to determine when conventional wisdom is relevant or whether to expect the unexpected.”
This year, the political department is trying to steer away from national polls in studying the election process. Instead, its members are taking a piecemeal approach, analyzing the race first state by state before looking at regional and national trends. The dynamic nature of campaigning is being considered as well, Ortiz said, noting that the success of the candidates is being determined by their treatment in the news media more than by their political affiliation. This influence has resulted in messy prediction patterns, he said.
Ortiz and his team are also in correspondence with national election analysts, including University of Georgia lecturer Josh Putnam and Geoff Skelley, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
“The 2016 Mock Con research team has probably the most difficult research prediction responsibility that I’ve seen since my first Mock Con in 1988,” said the convention’s faculty adviser Bill Connelly. “In the modern era, the predictions become much more difficult because of the reforms in the late 60s, early 1970s, which made the process more open and democratic, and for that reason probably more volatile.”
Admission to the Warner Center sessions is by ticket only; general admission tickets are sold out.
More information can be found under the Mock Covention tab on the Rockbridge Report website and at the website of the 26th Mock Convention, www.mockconvention.com
