By: Cassie Miller

This year the senior government classes held a mock debate and election on November seventh and eighth. Mr. Foster’s second period class chose Brayden Haley to be their candidate and he represented the Republican party. Dr. Price’s class represented the Libertarian party with Lydia Rush as their candidate. The Democratic party was represented by Mr. Foster’s sixth period class and Andrew Stump was their candidate. On debate day, senior Ty Schiewe filled in for Andrew Stump (who was absent) to represent the Democratic party. 

Each class had their own campaign team that consisted of a campaign manager, activists, pollsters, propagandists, an advisor, and speech writers. The classes have been working on the project since the beginning of October. They prepared speeches, created polls to determine qualities of the ultimate candidate, and made posters that endorsed their candidates. Each of the three candidates spent lots of time learning about their parties and their stances on certain issues to prepare for the debate. Libertarian candidate Lydia Rush said, “I studied up on the Libertarian stances and on the other party’s stances a lot to really try to understand all the parties.”

Mr. Thomas moderated the debate by asking each candidate several questions about controversial issues. Some topics were national security, America’s youth, education, and marijuana legality. Each candidate was given the opportunity to answer each question based on their party’s views on the issue and not their personal views.

The day after the debate, Election Day, all students in the high school and junior high voted for the candidate they wanted to be President. Brayden Haley, who represented the Republican party, won with 44% of the votes; Lydia Rush came in second with 39% of the votes; and Andrew Stump came in last with 17% of the votes. Later that evening, Donald Trump, who was the real-life Republican candidate, won the American Presidential election and became the new President-elect of the United States.