The Political Action Club held its annual campaign fair on Tuesday night, Jan. 27. The event took place in the Patriot Wellness Center (PWC) rooms and served as a way to inform and expose students to the candidates for the next primary election in Nov. 2026.
This year, the event had its all time highest attendance since its significant drop in attendees during the pandemic and year following. At the fair, there were over 12 campaign representatives, with a mix of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. In order to maintain these relationships, Lewis King ’27, one of the leaders in Political Action Club, values the communication between the students and the guests.
“Usually it’s pretty easy to get liberal candidates there,” King said. “But some of the more conservative members of the club had to try very hard to get Republicans to come and have a balance.”
According to King, in addition to outreach the club also maintains relationships by conducting regular interactions by advertising opportunities to club members where they can be involved directly with some of the campaigns. For King, it’s important that students have the ability to freely communicate with the representatives to expand their political knowledge.
“A lot of people themselves either have connections or have worked, interned with people, or had volunteered with the candidates,” King said. “Then year after year, some new people come, and you have to make sure they have a good civil experience with the students.”
Campaign fair also serves as a civic assignment for students in a government class. The state of Illinois, as well as 38 others, mandates students to participate in at least one civics action event before they graduate. Students like Victoria Cai ’26 encourage all students to attend in order to familiarize themselves with local politics especially.
“Politics affects everybody and there isn’t really anyone who isn’t affected by politics, so I think it’s super important to be aware just so you know what’s going on around you,” Cai said. “Especially a lot of the people that I interacted with today talked about policies that focused on education, which is super relevant to us as students.”
According to a study by the Civics Center there is an estimated 26 percent decrease in 18 year old voters — around 3.2 million missing votes. Like Cai, King believes that political education is valuable and the campaign fair is a great way to start these types of conversations.
“For me, it’s fun to, not just for me to have conversations, but hearing what other students have conversations about, what experiences they bring, and what questions they ask, because then it’s interesting seeing how the candidate responds, but it’s also just interesting seeing how the candidate responds, but it’s also just interesting seeing what other young people care about, and how they make their voices heard,” King said.