Election 2024: Presidential Debate

With President Biden and former President Donald Trump scheduled to hold their first televised presidential debate on June 27,  Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum invites you to join retired political commentator and Folio board trustee Mort Kondracke and our panel of experts for a conversation on the state of the most consequential presidential campaign in recent US history, the issues that will influence the outcome, America’s polarized political culture, and major races in Washington State.

Mort will be joined by John Lapinski, chief of the Decision Desk and all polling for the NBC News network, former LA Times and Associated press foreign correspondent Carol J Williams, Democratic campaign consultants Sandeep Kaushik, conservative Seattle KVI AM radio  host John Carlson and conservative KTTH AM radio host Jason Rantz.

Carol J. Williams is former senior international affairs writer for the Los Angeles Times. A foreign correspondent for 25 years, she has won five Overseas Press Club awards, two Sigma Delta Chi citations and was a 1993 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. She has served as Times bureau chief in Budapest, Vienna, Moscow, Berlin and the Caribbean. A native of Rhode Island and irrepressible Red Sox fan, Williams speaks Russian, German, French and Spanish, and has reported from more than 80 countries. She left The Times in 2015.

John Lapinski, Ph.D., is the Robert A. Fox Professor of Political Science, Faculty Director of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program and the Director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. He also serves as the Faculty Director for the Executive Masters of Public Administration program within the Fels Institute of Government and as the Director of the Elections Unit at NBC News. In his role for NBC News, Lapinski is responsible for projecting races for the network and produces election-related stories through exit polls for NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, and all of NBC’s digital properties.

John Carlson is a veteran news commentator, and has hosted “The Commute with Carlson” on 570 KVI radio since the early 1990’s.  He was a co-founder and former President of the Washington Policy Center, one of the northwest’s most respected policy research centers, and has also led three landmark initiative campaigns in Washington, including America’s first “Three Strikes, You’re Out” law in 1993.  He was listed in Columns magazine as one of the UW’s most influential graduates of the 20th century.  He received a B.A. in political science with distinction from the University of Washington in 1981.

A partner at Sound View Strategies (SVS), Sandeep Kaushik is a political and public affairs consultant in Seattle. In addition to his extensive public relations, political communications and strategic advisory work for elected officials and civic leaders, governments and non-profits, he has worked on multiple political campaigns in the Northwest, including numerous issue and ballot measure campaigns.

Jason Rantz is Seattle's fresh, contemporary conservative voice. Young and urban, passionate and bold, Rantz is outnumbered by the Progressive chorus, yet refuses to ignore the conservative principles at the core of America's greatness. Prolific on-air and online, Rantz knows he's outnumbered in Seattle, but he's never shy to be outspoken about it.