Dr. Judithanne McLauchlan’s “Road to the White House” class set off for New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon to work on seven different presidential campaigns over the next 10 days.
Twenty-three USF St. Petersburg students set off for New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon to work on the campaigns of seven presidential candidates.
For the next 10 days, the students in the university’s quadrennial “Road to the White House” class will split up and join campaigners for Democrats Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley and Republicans Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
The six-credit course is offered every four years during presidential primaries. It is directed by Dr. Judithanne McLauchlan, who has worked on five primaries in New Hampshire.
This year’s trip marks her fourth, and largest, group of students.
“I usually have every campaign covered, which is my goal,” she said. “But I let the students pick (their candidates) themselves. (When) you’re up there, going door-to-door in the snow, you want to believe in the candidate. I wouldn’t want to put somebody with someone they might not prefer. It wouldn’t be the same.”
Registering for the course wasn’t as simple as typing in a CRN course code in Oasis. Students had to go through an application process first.
“I look at their resumes so I know their year, GPA, major, academic standing, if they’ve worked on campaigns before, who they want to work for and why,” McLauchlan said. “Not everyone I accepted knew who they wanted to work for, and that was fine. They didn’t have to know. But most of them had an idea.”
The group is comprised of multiple majors: political science, international studies, mass communications and psychology.
After their flight landed Sunday, the class was scheduled to have a group dinner, which would serve as their last “what to expect” meeting.
“Since Monday’s (Iowa) caucus day, we aren’t going to have a long meeting that morning,” McLaughlan said. “We’re just going to get everyone to their placements as fast as we can.”
Results of the Iowa caucuses, a much-ballyhooed event in the long campaign, will be out on Monday night.
The class has an online blog that will serve as a one-stop-shop to see highlights from the various campaigns, while students will update their own personal blogs.
Three of the course credits serve as a seminar about the history of politics of presidential campaigns, with the remaining three designated to the fieldwork campaign internship.
“Generally, we’re going to have seminars in the morning, and by lunchtime, I’ll drop them off,” said McLauchlan. “Then they’re at their placements the rest of the day, into the evening, and so on.”
The group rented two 15-passenger vans. Twelve students are in Salem, where they will work on the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. The other 11 will be in nearby Manchester, the headquarters for Bush, Rubio, O’Malley, Cruz and Trump.
Most of the students’ voter contact work will involve door-to-door canvassing, phone banks and campaigning on street corners with signs. The New Hampshire primary is Feb. 9.
“We’ve got a very aggressive agenda,” McLauchlan said, “but we will be overlaying that with stops to see candidates interacting with real voters, taking tough questions – not just television advertising and 30-second sound bites.
“I’m excited for my students to get out there and see it. It’s real grassroots, retail politics.”
View the group’s course blog or individual student blogs to follow Dr. McLauchlan’s class in real time.
