Students portray Walz and Vance in a mock debate at Masterman in Philadelphia

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On the eve of Election Day, JD Vance and Tim Walz engaged in a spirited debate on 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 about abortion, and that’s okay. That’s what we want. We want disagreement in our country.”

Walz responded: “JD Vance thinks the state legislature knows more about a woman’s body than she does. This shows that 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 JR Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School—the most selective in the district and one that always appears near the top of “America’s Best High Schools” lists.

When it was over, the several hundred students present cast their vote in a poll.

More on that later.

The mock debate held Monday morning culminated a week-long process — and a decades-long tradition. Steven Gilligan’s Advanced Placement government students split 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 for president, but for mayor, congressman, senator, governor, and even attorney general.

Ray Eggerts, who portrayed Democrat Tim Walz, and Sarah Zdancewic, who played Republican JD Vance, debated for an hour in front of several hundred classmates, covering nearly every major issue in the campaign. They answered sophisticated questions developed by AP government students on 10 topics, including inflation, tariffs, foreign policy, drug trafficking, climate change, the border crisis and the influx of fentanyl into the US, misinformation and free speech, abortion, prices homes. , and affordable healthcare.

Unlike some exchanges between the actual candidates, there were few platitudes or superficialities here.

A student discussion about housing and Kamala Harris’ proposal to offer $25,000 to first-time home buyers went like this:

“Minnesota, the state I lead, is number one when it comes to millennial homeownership,” Eggerts told Walz. “The solution to the housing crisis is for the federal government to help people and construction companies make housing for people for the first time, right? The more houses we have, the lower the cost.”

Zdancewic responded like Vance: “When you give people $25,000 when they buy a house, it’s not actually going to lower the cost, it’s going to make the seller raise their prices.”

As for free speech, Eggerts said while it’s also crucial in the Constitution, it’s dangerous to let misinformation go “unchecked” that leads to the denial of past election results or “an attack on the Capitol or violence against immigrants.”

Zdancewic countered: “I’m concerned that you’re saying people should be prevented from saying the things they believe just because you don’t agree with them.”

Gilligan decided that the mock debate would focus on the vice presidential candidates rather than former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. For a student to 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 past the personalities and focus on the issues,” he said. “I saw that both candidates seemed reasonable in the vice presidential debate and that it was more sophisticated.”

The 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.

In the quarter-century she’s been doing this, race and gender have never factored into the selection of students to play the candidates, Gilligan said. “During the Clinton-Obama debate in 2008 (during the Democratic primaries), Hillary was a boy and Obama was a girl,” Gilligan said.

Both Eggerts, who lives in Northern Liberties, and Zdancewic, of University City, said their own personal views were secondary to trying to understand and master the positions of the nominees.

Still, “it’s an interesting exercise to represent someone you disagree with,” Zdancewic said. Delving into the political debate and trying to rationalize positions gave her a deeper understanding of the issues, she said.

Eggerts said he mostly agreed with Walz, but also had some differences with him, including on the Israel-Hamas war and climate change. He also said he would like the Harris-Walz ticket to be 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 around a football field, while the commercial for Vance was all about being a statesman.

In their closing statements at the debate, the two students got creative with alliteration. “No matter what issue you care about, the Harris-Walz’s have the right politics… When compassion calls, vote Tim Walz, when freedom calls, vote Tim Walz, when progress calls, vote Tim Walz,” he said Eggerts.

Citing inflation, the border and drugs, Zdancewic said, “I’m begging you, get the right attitude, 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 began in the 1990s and was designed to engage more young people in public policy and current issues.

After the debate, students voted in a poll, and 74 percent were for Walz, Gilligan said. Some students, however, said how they voted didn’t necessarily reflect their actual opinions, but rather whether they or their friends worked on the Walz or Vance teams.

Despite all their research, neither Eggerts nor Zdancewic, who are both 17, can vote Tuesday. Both said they were disappointed by it.

“I wish I could,” Zdancewic said. “I’m really upset that 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 [email protected].