The MPE, from the ground level

By Floyd Wombacher
Setting out for my final semester at Western, I committed myself to doing what I could to make the Mock Presidential Election (MPE) a success. Along with my involvement in the event through Pi Sigma Alpha (the National Political Science Honor Society), the College Democrats, and acting as a peer mentor for a First-Year Experience class that will fill the role of various states’ delegations, I also took on the role of campaign manager for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, the senior U.S. senator from Delaware.

And that’s where my life got real demanding, real quickly.

I got interested in Biden soon after the 9/11 attacks on our country when I managed to catch one of his many appearances on the Sunday morning news program circuit. The impression I took from that day’s interview? It seemed like he was talking to me, not necessarily the Washington elite. It was a rather refreshing approach, one that spoke volumes of the man’s leadership capabilities. I made it a goal to try to follow Biden’s speeches to Congress, his votes on legislation and to which proposals he attached his name. When the 2008 election cycle came along, it was well known that he was going to throw his hat into the ring, despite already being in the hole looking up at the “Big 3” – U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee.

When I first learned of Dr. Rick Hardy’s vision of a campus-wide mock election back in late 2006, it came to me that not only could I pad my resume with this experience, but there might even be an opportunity to support my chosen candidate. By the time summer had rolled around and the debates began (so early!!) among the contenders, it was clear that those students who did not follow the political process very closely would probably, out of innocent ignorance, announce their limited support for either the woman candidate or the guy from Illinois. I saw an opportunity to get the word out about Biden by making use of this mock election, and I decided to put forth what effort I could muster around my schoolwork and my baby-rearing work to make Biden a viable Presidential candidate on this campus.

When it came time for the first MPE organizational meeting to take place, I had already attended a Biden campaign stop in Keokuk, Iowa, and made contacts with members of the regional and national staffers in order to secure their support. At the time, I was very high on the idea that Biden might make a stop in Macomb during our big event, and I began to make plans for just such an occasion.

During the organizational meeting, I gathered a few individuals with whom I had classes in the past and asked about their interest in joining the Biden team. We started out as a group of five students who were eager to take on the task of getting our candidate’s name out there in the public eye. Soon, we added some freshmen students from an intro Sociology class, doubling our numbers.

As the event took shape, the Biden MPE organization had two goals in preparation for the big event: first, create signage to post in as many buildings as we could reach, and second, get to know the issues. The latter will be most important during the first three nights of the mock election, as we will need this knowledge to gain delegate votes and hopefully get Biden the nomination. I came up with a list of the most important issues of the campaign — 14 in all — and divvied them up among the staff to compile two-to-three sentence summarizations that would all fit onto one page to act as a cheat sheet that we could refer to in a pinch.

Now, it begins.

-- Wombacher is a senior political science major