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Students at Washington and Lee University are laying out their best business attire in preparation of the 28th annual Mock Convention this Friday and Saturday. After four years of hard work and planning, the convention’s executive team is ready to experience their efforts coming to fruition.
“I’m so proud of our hard work and how we have revolutionized how Mock Convention is run, and to see it all come together is something I have looked forward to since my freshman year. But, I’m also excited to see our entire team in action – this is the best possible group of students to have done this with,” said W&L senior and the convention’s political chair, Foster Harris.
Much of the student body has contributed to the project throughout the four-year project. Harris told The News-Gazette last week, “… 95% of the student body is involved in this effort, promoting knowledge of the political process, starting dialogue on campus, and developing a unique civic education.”
The university began this initiative in 1908 to demonstrate the political process and to encourage civic engagement of young constituents. Since its genesis, Mock Convention has been acknowledged across the nation as one of the most renowned prediction tools for the primary election with a 74 percent accuracy rate.
The Mock Convention does, though, have a 50/50 success rate with the last two presidential contests. Students correctly picked Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, but predicted Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee in 2020, just prior to the start of the pandemic. -Over the years, the convention has attracted many influential persons to speak on behalf of their political parties, five of which were later elected president – Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and the current president, Joe Biden.
The opportunity to learn from
DONALD TRUMP JR.
some of the nation’s most notable leaders is a part of Mock Convention’s legacy, an experience this year’s students are hopeful to perpetuate.
“When alumni come to us to tell us that their Mock Convention is their most special memory at W&L, it is almost always because of the speakers they saw,” said Ramsay Trask, a senior at W&L and general chair of the convention.
Trask continued, “Creating a truly memorable and relevant speakers list was the top of our priority (besides the prediction) from four years ago when they started planning.”
To reach that goal, the team set out to raise money with the intention of tripling the Mock Con’s fundraising record, which was set with the 2012 convention with $344,000.
This year, their efforts raised $1 million, “which is unbelievable even to me,” Trask told The News-Gazette in an email. Almost all these funds were used to cover speaker expenses. -The students involved have taken a unique approach to gathering insightful data, which will ultimately impact their final prediction.
“Nobody is doing it like we are this cycle,” Harris commented. “We use [the FiveThirtyEight model] data and more, digging behind the toplines and into the crosstabs while implementing modeled and actual GOP likely primary voter breakdowns at the statewide and congressional district level. Because of that approach, we are able to predict states that might not have any quality state polls by the time we make our prediction.”
Harris continued, “Our outreach approach is also totally unique. We have developed off-the-grid relationships with senior advisers on all the major campaigns, are wellconnected within the RNC [Republican National Committee] and other grassroots organizations impacting this race and are talking to decision makers in all 56 states, territories, and the District of Columbia.
“Because of that operation, we have information that nobody else has, whether that is internal polling, internal strategy, when candidates might drop out, and more,” he said. “And, finally, we have a rare mastery of the delegate allocation and election rules, which we map onto what we are seeing in the data and hearing from our outreach to make our delegate count prediction as accurate as possible.”
-Continuing with the Mock Con tradition, students are predicting the of out-of-power party presidential nominee.
The executive team has invited a number of wellknown politicians and pundits to speak on behalf of the Republican Party, including Donald Trump Jr., Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and a former White House press secretary under President Trump, Kayleigh McEnany.
“Each cycle, we have the challenge of reflecting the out-of-power party as it is while also showing the disagreements and divides in the party as they look to choose a nominee … Without a central figure and the bully pulpit of the White House, the out-of-power party always highlights diverse viewpoints. Between Governor Brian Kemp, Donald Trump Jr., Governor Glenn Youngkin, and Asa Hutchinson, our speaker lineup brings that inthe- party viewpoint diversity in spades,” said Harris as the convention’s political chair. -The festivities kick off Friday morning at 9 with the delegates parade on Main Street, where students will celebrate the convention with homemade floats representing the different states and territories.
Then all of the action turns to the convention hall, which this year will once again be held in the university’s Duchossois Tennis Center. Prior to the 2020, the convention had been held in the Warner Center. That venue was unavailable that year because construction was underway on the new athletic center, which is now complete. With the size of the new gymnasium smaller than it was the former Warner Center, the space in the tennis center is triple the size of the new gymnasium. The venue maximizes both operational capacity and attendee capacity, and will also allow the university to implement a VIP experience for donors contributing to the convention, Trask noted.
General admission tickets sold out last week and a waiting list was implemented. Those unable to go to the convention may livestream the weekend’s sessions at www. mockconvention.com/2024livestream.
The first session, which will run from 12:30 to 4 p.m. Friday, will feature such speakers as Amy Walter, publisher of the Cook Political Report and a frequent panelist on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as well as CNN’s “Inside Politics.”
Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, will also present that afternoon. Turning Point USA is a nonprofit organization that encourages students to advocate for freedom and limited government.
Also in the afternoon lineup are Kristen Soltis Anderson, a pollster, speaker, commentator and author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America”; and Candice Owens, founder of the BLEXIT Foundation and host of the “Candace Owens Show.” BLEXIT is dedicated to driving conservative principles into urban communities.
At session two on Friday evening from 6 to 9:30, students will hear from Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the secretary of state in the Trump administration.
Mike Allen, a veteran Mock Con speaker, will also be in Friday night’s lineup. A Washington and Lee alum, Allen is a journalist and cofounder of Axios, a business and political news platform.
Also speaking Friday evening will be Chris Miller, who served as Trump’s secretary of defense in the final two months of Trump’s administration; and social psychologist Johnathan Haidt.
The third session on Saturday, which will run from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., will feature three prominent Republicans: Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin; Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son and executive vice president of the Trump Organization; and Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia.
The convention will conclude Saturday afternoon with more speakers and voting, starting at 3.
The afternoon speakers include former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who briefly ran for the Republican presidential nomination; former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; the Ruthless Variety Podcast; and Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas.
The voting will take place after the speakers exit the stage.
W&L students of past conventions have never made a wrong prediction within a Republican cycle, and Harris is determined to uphold that reputation.
Regardless of the outcome, Harris believes that the convention is a unique and special way to develop civic education.
“It’s really special that no matter the party, the entire student body gets into what we do,” Harris said. “Ultimately, Mock Convention brings the student body together to celebrate the political process and, importantly, to get it right.”
