Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.
On the eve of Election Day, JD Vance and Tim Walz engaged in a hard-hitting debate about a wide range of issues, from abortion to affordable health care to housing.
Asked about abortion, Vance shied away from a direct answer, saying, “There are a lot of different opinions on abortion, and that’s ok. That’s what we want. We want disagreement in our country.”
Walz shot back: “JD Vance thinks the state legislature knows more about a woman’s body than she does. This shows he doesn’t trust you with your own body, and if he doesn’t trust you, you can’t trust him.”
In this debate, the vice presidential candidates were actually students, and the exchange took place at Philadelphia’s J.R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School – the district’s most selective and one that always shows up near the top of “best high schools in America” lists.
When it was finished, the few hundred students in attendance cast their votes in a straw poll.
More about that later.
The mock debate held Monday morning culminated a weekslong process – and a decadeslong tradition. Steven Gilligan’s Advanced Placement government students divided up into camps more or less at random, chose who would represent the candidates, researched their positions, and lobbied their classmates. Gilligan, a social studies teacher, has been doing this exercise for elections since 1998, and not just those for president but for mayor, congress, senator, governor, and even district attorney.
Ray Eggerts, who portrayed Democrat Tim Walz, and Sarah Zdancewic, as Republican JD Vance, debated for an hour before several hundred schoolmates, covering just about every issue of importance in the campaign. They answered sophisticated questions developed by the AP government students on 10 topics including inflation, tariffs, foreign policy, drug trafficking, climate change, the crisis at the border and the influx of fentanyl into the U.S, disinformation and free speech, abortion, housing prices, and affordable health care.
Unlike in some exchanges between the actual candidates, there were few platitudes or superficialities here.
One back-and-forth between the student debaters, on housing and Kamala Harris’ proposal to give $25,000 to first-time home buyers, went like this:
“Minnesota, the state that I lead, is number one when it comes to millennial home ownership,” said Eggerts as Walz. “The solution to the housing crisis is for the federal government to help people and construction companies make first time homes for people, right? The more houses we have, the more the cost goes down.”
Responded Zdancewic as Vance: “When you give people $25,000 when buying a house, it is not actually going to decrease the cost, but make the seller increase their prices.”
On the issue of free speech, Eggerts said while it is crucial and in the Constitution, it is dangerous to leave “unchecked” disinformation that leads to denials of past election results or “an attack on the Capitol or violence against immigrants.”
Zdancewic countered: “It concerns me that you’re saying that people should be prevented from saying the things that they believe just because you disagree with it.”
Gilligan decided the mock debate would focus on the vice presidential candidates rather than former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Having a student try to portray Trump would have been too distracting, he said. He didn’t want to put anyone in the position of presenting what could be interpreted as a caricature.
“We wanted to get beyond personalities and focus on the issues,” he said. “We saw that both candidates seemed reasonable in the vice presidential debate and that it was more sophisticated.”
Students were diligent in their research, Gilligan said, but not many volunteered to actually play the candidates. Eggerts got Walz, and Zdancewic got Vance, based on a coin flip.
Over the quarter-century he has been doing this, race and gender never mattered in choosing which students would play the candidates, Gilligan said. “During the debate between Clinton and Obama in 2008 [during the Democratic primary], Hillary was a boy and Obama was a girl,” Gilligan said.
Both Eggerts, who lives in Northern Liberties, and Zdancewic, from University City, said that their own personal views were secondary to attempting to understand and master the positions of their assigned candidates.
Still, “it’s an interesting exercise to represent someone you disagree with,” said Zdancewic. Diving into the policy debate and trying to rationalize the positions gave her a deeper understanding of issues, she said.
Eggerts said that he mostly agreed with Walz, but he also had some differences with him, including on the Israel-Hamas war and climate change. He also said he wished the Harris-Walz ticket would get firmly behind Medicare for all.
“Honestly, I lean more left than Walz,” he said.
The two teams also prepared short campaign ads. The one for Walz leaned heavily on the “Coach Walz” dynamic, with him running on a football field, while the ad for Vance was all about being a statesman.
In their closing statements at the debate, the two students got creative with alliteration. “No matter the issue you care about, Harris-Walz are the ones with the right policy … When compassion calls, vote Tim Walz, when freedom calls, vote Tim Walz, when progress calls, vote Tim Walz,” Eggerts declared.
Invoking inflation, the border, and drugs, Zdancewic said, “I implore you, take the right stance, vote for yourselves, vote for JD Vance.”
The Masterman campaign and mock debate is the last vestige of a Student Voices program funded by the Annenberg Center for Public Policy, which started in the 1990s and was designed to get more young people engaged in public policy and current issues.
After the debate, students voted in a straw poll, and 74% went for Walz, Gilligan said. Some students, however, said that how they voted didn’t necessarily reflect their real views, but rather whether they or their friends worked on the Walz or Vance teams.
Despite all of their research, neither Eggerts nor Zdancewic, who are both 17 years old, can vote Tuesday. Both said they were disappointed by that.
“I wish I could,” said Zdancewic. “I’m really upset I can’t.”
Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.
