Educational Media Reviews Online

Since 1996, Townsend Harris High School, located in the New York City borough of Queens, has held presidential election simulations which mirror the actual presidential campaigns from stump speeches to fundraising, media coverage to special interest lobbying. The Candidates is a documentary chronicling the 2016 simulation, kicking off in early September. Misbah, a Pakistani-American student running in the election as Hillary Clinton, wears the hijab and competes on the school’s track team. Daniel, a student whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union and whose personal political views are conservative, is running in the election as Donald Trump. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein have student avatars as well and, tweaking the real-life national playbook just a little, are given equal opportunity to address the student body alongside the Democrat and Republican candidates.

Instead of CNN, student anchors backed by student camera crews and directors host TNN, the Townsend News Network, which covers election-related events both in real time and with post-event political analysis. Weekly radio shows, run by students, are broadcast to all classrooms. Candidates can buy ad time or appear in person on these shows, and any student can call into the studio on classroom phones to ask questions or make comments. As in our country’s presidential elections, the goal for each candidate is to persuade their fellow students through charisma, speeches, broadcast interviews, in-person appearances, policy proposals, and debates to vote for them on Election Day. In a fascinating and frankly brilliant piece of strategy by the adults at Townsend, part of the simulation is that the votes of freshmen count more than anyone else’s votes do, forcing the candidates and their teams to spend a large amount of time engaging personally, walking the halls shaking hands, introducing themselves, and giving their pitch to students they don’t personally know or have other classes with. Handing out candy during class visits for Q&A doesn’t hurt, but the candidates still get hit with hard policy questions from their peers anyway.

As a documentary, The Candidates takes a largely hands-off approach to these proceedings, straightforwardly being a fly on the wall through the seven-week campaign, from an all-school assembly kick-off through the aftermath of the election in November. Interviews with the various students, especially Misbah and Daniel, serve to punctuate and help focus the narrative, but what the filmmakers are most interested in is the process of civic engagement. Though Daniel and Misbah are who carry us through the film, a lot of time is also given to the students playing various campaign managers, policy analysts, spouses, and running mates. The teachers and school administrators helping construct the process and advising the students involved get some interview time as well, and every so often there are inserts of video clips from previous campaigns in Townsend Harris’s history. Overall, the effect is to illustrate not only how the recurring simulation spotlighting our political system unites the students, but also how it inspires them to educate themselves and gain a deeper understanding of politics and a political life, for their role in the simulation and for themselves as they reach voting age.

The filmmakers also show how the students have to deal with the less inspiring realities of political campaigns. Because the students are meant to mimic their real-life counterparts, Daniel takes to the student airwaves to explain his “locker-room talk” while trying to shift anger onto Bill Clinton’s past sexual behaviors. Misbah struggles with figuring out how she, as Hillary, can counter Daniel’s persistent questions about “missing emails,” and Daniel himself struggles with wanting to promote conservative values but “having to do it through a Trump lens.” Misbah’s campaign manager reiterates that Misbah needs to take a harder personal attitude when playing Hillary and be more forceful in her speeches. Campaign ads on both sides turn negative. And of course, the rest of school doesn’t stop just because the simulation is going on.

By Halloween and the prep for their final debate, on stage in the school auditorium, Misbah and Daniel and pretty much everyone else involved are exhausted and, as one of the teachers puts it, “just hoping for the end.” The students all put their best foot forward for the debate, and then a week later, Election Day—at Townsend Harris and in real-life—happens.

The Candidates, at bottom, is a documentary interested in conveying hope in the next generation of Americans and their engagement with our nation’s political systems. It succeeds through the honesty and integrity of the student participants at Townsend Harris, and through the hard work, often unnoticed, by teachers and administrators who enable programs like this to happen in Queens and in other high schools and colleges nationwide. The filmmakers close their documentary with Misbah, as she reflects that “maybe one day…there will be someone like me in the White House.” As befits our great American nation, founded by and composed of immigrants, there’s no better way of ending the film.