Midterm Elections Postmortem

The 2022 midterm elections are regarded by both Democrats and Republicans as one of the most crucial midterms in recent history. Join Folio for the postmortem wrap up of the elections with a panel discussion where we will review the results in the House and Senate races, the hot button issues that led to capturing and retaining offices, and how the results will influence the 2024 presidential election, and the long-term character of US politics.

Moderated by Morton Kondracke, the panel will feature John Lapinski, director of NBC News’s Elections Unit; Aseem Mulji, Legal Counsl at the Campaign Legal Center, Washington State political commentator Sandeep Kaushik,  Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Washington Policy Center and Carol J. Williams, foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and LA Times. 

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. Dr. Lapinski earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2000, and previously was an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He came to Penn in 2006. His primary area of research is concerned with understanding national elections as well as lawmaking in Congress through empirical analysis.

Aseem Mulji previously worked at the Participatory Budgeting Project, where he supported efforts to expand participatory democracy in the U.S. At CLC, Aseem serves as counsel in voting rights and redistricting cases, including TN NAACP v. Lee (M.D. Tenn.), VoteAmerica v. Schwab (D. Kans.), and Soto Palmer v. Hobbs (W.D. Wash.). He supports CLC’s actions against the Federal Election Commission for failures to enforce campaign finance laws. He also works to advance various democracy reforms, including state-level voting rights acts, ranked-choice voting, public financing and measures to ensure ballot access for justice-involved voters.

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.

A partner at Sound View Strategies (SVS) and Folio board trustee, Sandeep Kaushik does political and public affairs consulting work 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. Prior to forming SVS, Sandeep worked as deputy communications director for then-King County Executive Ron Sims, and prior to that he worked as a political columnist/writer for Seattle’s alt-weekly, the Stranger, and as Seattle correspondent for Time Magazine and the Boston Globe.

Michael Gallagher is the third president of Washington Policy Center. His career includes service at the highest levels of government and industry. Mike spent more than 11 years as president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade association representing the video game industry. Prior to his post at ESA, Mike worked in the wireless industry and served as a chief of staff on Capitol Hill, and as an Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Commerce and head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration. He was also a practice group co-chair at the Perkins Coie law firm. In 2018, Mike launched Intrepidity, a strategic consulting firm, based in Mclean, Virginia.

Morton Kondracke is a retired journalist and American political commentator. He became well known due to a long stint as a panelist on The McLaughlin Group. Kondracke worked for several major publications, serving for twenty years as executive editor and columnist for the non-partisan Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. He was also co-host of The Beltway Boys of Fox News Channel and was a regular nightly contributor to Special Report with Brit Hume and Special Report with Bret Baier.