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A Tradition of Accuracy: W&L Kicks Off Mock Con 2016

Instagram: @MOCKCON2016

Washington and Lee University hosts one of the country’s most prestigious mock political conventions every presidential election year, and 2016’s begins today.

Washington and Lee University has been predicting the out-of-office party Presidential nominee with notable accuracy since 1908. In fact, they’ve only been wrong twice since 1948 - that year they chose Arthur Vandenberg over eventual nominee Thomas Dewey, and in 2008 they predicted Hillary Clinton would win the nomination over Barack Obama.

That statistic is thanks to the campus-wide fervor that goes into this entirely student run production.

“It’s really great because it does get everyone excited about politics”

Randy Karlson is a Washington and Lee Senior and a co-director of Communication for Mock Con.

“You can walk into any dining hall on campus, or into any Fraternity house, Sorority house, and somebody’s going to be talking about the election. Someone’s going to be talking about mock con.”

Karlson says, at its core, Mock Con is one big research project.

“That includes a political team that does the research and reaches out to different states, and different people in the states, to get the best possible information to make our prediction. That includes our financial team that fundraises for the event - they’ve raised upwards of a quarter million dollars for this $500,000 event.”

They also take care of operations, logistics, media outreach, and booking the speakers. Here’s who’s on the docket this year:

“Sort of the headline of the group is former Vice President Dick Cheney. We also have former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The keynote speaker on Saturday afternoon is Kentucky Governor Matt Bevins, also a Washington and Lee alum.”

The long list of past speakers includes Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Eric Cantor, and James Carville.

Bill Clinton played his saxophone at an off-campus house party there in 1988, and in 1956, former Vice President Alben Barkley actually died on stage after giving his speech.

He collapsed after his passionate last line of, “I'm glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.”

Hopefully, that won’t happen again. But we could have a better idea of who the Republican nominee will be in this seemingly unpredictable presidential race.

Kelsea Pieters has worked as a reporter and producer for WVTF since March 2014. She regularly contributes feature and news stories and produces Back to the Blue Ridge with Kinney Rorrer. Kelsea graduated from Roanoke College in 2013 with a BA in Communication.
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