Recently, I performed in my high school’s production of The Election, a comedy play written by Don Zolidis. It was a great experience for my first show, and the students who worked on it all did a great job. I read the script cover-to-cover and thought it would make for an interesting analysis.
The story revolves around a senior, Mark Davenport, running for student body president at Presley High School. At first, he has no competition, but when classmate Christy Martin joins, the stakes rise dramatically and the story goes off the rails. It’s a political satire (per the Goodreads description), but may not stand as well narratively.
This is just my analysis of the play and it is definitely possible that I didn’t fully understand it, so I’d recommend reading it yourself (Zolidis has a publicly available preview).
For context, I’ve outlined the plot of the story in case you haven’t read it yet.
Plot
Act I
Mark Davenport is a 12th grade student at Presley High School. Due to a scandal involving the previous student body president Skip Chumley punching a school mascot, an election for the replacement will be held in a month. The entire situation is televised by Kyli, the host of a cable access news channel. Seeing the opportunity to improve his college application along with a desire to make the school better, Mark decides to enter the election.
As Mark files for candidacy, another senior, Christy Martin enters the election. Christy explains her plans to Mark in the office, outlining unpopular policies focused on increasing academic pressure and eliminating school sports. Mark leaves after mocking them as impractical, believing that his victory is ensured. Under the encouragement of his best friend and campaign manager Karl Merriweather, he develops his own campaign platform based on reforms empowering students, delivering a speech that gains him the support of the student body.
While making posters, Mark and Karl turn on the television and watch a campaign ad persuading voters to support Christy Martin. Christy declares a patriotic stance appealing to a desire for a better America, and the ad ends with a voiceover stating funding by the committee to elect Christy Martin.
In the first presidential debate, which is moderated and televised by Kyli, Mark is unprepared and is unable to articulate his plans convincingly. On the other hand, Christy appeals to the American Dream and feminism, gaining the support from the overwhelming majority. Additionally, she agrees to select one random voter at the end of the election and go on a date with them. After the debate ends, Mark and Karl discuss his clear defeat, when a man dressed in a suit enters the room. He introduces himself as campaign strategist Gary McMaster, explaining that Christy has much more funding and will be using it to destroy Mark’s reputation. Gary shows them an attack ad weaponizing childhood incidents such as Mark forgetting to feed his sister’s goldfish, portraying him as unfit for leadership. At the end, a voiceover states funding from Forward Presley.
Gary explains that Forward Presley is a non-partisan political action committee (PAC) supporting Christy Martin, and that Mark can fight back by hiring him. Despite Gary insisting that the election has no rules, Mark believes in a fair election and turns down the offer to be backed by Gary’s PAC, Rise Up Presley. Not long after, Mark talks with Christy, who agrees that the targeted ads were unfair, but denies affiliation with Forward Presley. They make a deal to run positive campaigns.
Christy’s campaign makes calls spreading false rumors of a plan created by Mark to give points from the highest scoring students to the lowest scoring ones, starting a public scandal around the anti-American plan. In a televised segment of Kyli’s show, Mark unsuccessfully tries to clarify that he never made the plans, and is further labelled as a sexist when Christy twists his words.
After the segment ends, Karl suggests Mark use puppies to gain the support of the student body, and the two create a livestreamed ad. Mark misreads the cue cards and mispronounces “live” in the statement “if you want to see these puppies live, vote for me”. While Karl wrote “live” as in “live broadcast”, Mark pronounces it as in “I live in New York.” This erupts the Puppygate scandal, which paints Mark as threatening to kill puppies. In his press conference, the reporters refuse to listen to his explanations, and Gary reenters.
After Mark watches another Forward Presley ad reporting made-up stories of him killing puppies and leaking his address, Karl informs him that his house is on fire. Finally, Mark takes Gary’s deal, determined to defeat Christy.
Act II
Rise Up Presley broadcasts an ad implying that Christy is from France, undermining her patriotic appeals. Gary tells Mark that Christy’s main strength is the fact that she’s hotter than him, and the only way he can counteract this is by hiring a girlfriend hotter than Christy. Mark delivers a brief soliloquy to the audience, expressing a sense of inner emptiness from becoming a politician.
A conspiracy theorist, Miranda, appears on Kyli’s news segment, supporting the France controversy aggressively. Afterward, Gary tells Mark that she is a hired actress and justifies it through Christy’s hostile campaigning. He trains Mark on how to debate, focusing on avoiding questions, delivering witty remarks, and outrageous statements. In the next debate, Mark positions Christy as an elitist honor student and himself as the voice of the people, gaining some support.
In Mark’s next televised press conference, a hired model named Sasha proclaims herself to be his girlfriend, telling an over-the-top, exaggerated romance story of how she met Mark. After the event, Gary intends to start “Operation Catfight”, a plan to smear Christy by having Sasha criticize her appearance. When Mark protests, Gary reminds him that he already agreed to his campaign management, but Mark is firm in not talking about appearances in the debate.
Mark has another brief soliloquy directed to the audience, realizing that he doesn’t want to run for president anymore. When Gary enters the room in a phone call, discussing an increase of campaign ads, importing giraffes from Africa, and hiring the Kardashians, Mark announces that he is quitting the election. Gary refuses, arguing that Rise Up Presley is an unaffiliated political action committee that isn’t allowed to coordinate with Mark’s campaign, and that no matter what Mark does, he would win the election.
After another round of television ads from the campaigns attacking each other, Mark has a public speech declaring his withdrawal from the election and insisting that everyone vote for Christy. This increases his public support monumentally, gaining him the support of the majority. Immediately after, Christy declares her withdrawal. Mark speaks his final soliloquy to the audience, explaining his desire to win the election without losing his soul.
Privately, Mark and Christy have a conversation agreeing that they both wanted a clean election. They find out that both of their campaigns were being managed by Gary, with Christy realizing that he’s trying to buy the entire election. The two decide that to prevent Gary from winning, in the final debate, only truth would be spoken.
In the last debate, Kyli is noticeably more energetic and asks loaded questions to both candidates, trying to get them to criticize each other. While at first they give agreeable answers and praise, Kyli exerts more pressure, causing Mark to admit that his girlfriend Sasha was hired. Kyli eggs Christy on, telling her to take advantage of Mark’s confession, which Christy does. The debate devolves into name-calling and insults between Mark and Christy. At the end, Kyli arms them with Nerf guns, pressuring Mark to shoot. Christy falls dramatically, and uses the chance to appeal to voters by framing Mark as unhinged.
After the debate ends, Mark sees one last campaign ad, this time starring Karl. Karl entered the election as a neutral third party, and positions himself as the vote of sanity. Sasha publicly announces herself as his girlfriend. The ad is funded by a new PAC, Onward Presley. Gary reveals to Mark that he’s behind Karl’s campaign, and is already celebrating victory. Kyli reveals that she has been funding the PACs all along, since ratings and viewership increase with the drama in the election.
Christy and Mark watch the results of the election together. Karl wins with ninety-seven percent of the votes. Mark is in second place with three percent, and Christy has only one vote from Mark, since she forgot to vote. Because of Christy’s deal to the voters in the first debate, the story ends with them setting a date with each other and agreeing that it’d be great if all elections ended in that way.
Political References
The play was written in 2012, so several aspects of US politics were relevant at this time. Through my research, I found several real-life occurrences that Zolidis most likely was referencing in the story.
Citizens United
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that political spending is a form of free speech, which led to the creation of “Super PACs”. They could raise unlimited amounts of money to support either campaign, as long as they didn’t “coordinate directly” with the official campaign.
When Gary told Mark that Rise Up Presley is unaffiliated with his campaign, Zolidis was pointing out the loophole that exists in the real world. In reality, the separation between a presidential candidate’s campaign and a Super PAC in support of them can become blurred when they align with each other through public information and the same people work on both sides.
Wealth Redistribution
In the story, Christy’s campaign spreads a false rumor that Mark wants to take points from the highest-scoring students and give them to the lowest-scoring ones. This probably is a reference to Obama’s plan to raise taxes on income above a threshold.
Famously, there was a figure in the 2008 election known as Joe the Plumber, who told Obama that he was interested in purchasing a small plumbing business. When Obama replied that in the tax bracket above 250 thousand, the tax would be increased from 36 to 39 percent, it triggered a controversy with Joe the Plumber stating that Obama’s plans were “one step closer to socialism”.
Birther Conspiracy
During the 2008 election, there was numerous coverage on Barack Obama’s citizenship and religious belief. Many theories alleged that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the US and was therefore ineligible to be the president. This is likely what Zolidis referenced with the Christy Martin France controversy.
Skip Chumley
Assuming this play is based on the 2008 US Presidential Election, Skip Chumley would correspond to George W. Bush. Since Bush left office in the beginning of 2009 with a 34% approval rating, the opening scandal with Skip may be a reference to Bush’s unpopularity near the end of his second term.
Out of Context
A scandal erupting from Mark’s puppy ad is similar to incidents in media where a public figure says something and a quote is taken out of context. For example, in the 2012 US Presidential Election, Barack Obama said in a speech:
“Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
This was in the context of making a point that the wealthy don’t get rich solely due to their own work, but some part of it was due to contributions from the government. The last sentence was taken out of context, implying the word “that” referred to businesses instead of roads and bridges.
Soon after, Mitt Romney made a speech that referenced Obama’s:
“To say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motors, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza … To say something like that, it’s not just foolishness. It’s insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America.”
These were a few examples of real-world events that Zolidis may have been referencing, although much of the story could be taken as a general satire on American politics after the 2010 Citizens United ruling.
Analysis
My problem with The Election is that it’s too long. A satire of American presidential elections being compared to high school ones could’ve fit into an SNL sketch. When I read relatively long-form works, I usually expect some form of cohesiveness. The Election was unsatisfactory in this aspect.
In Gary McMaster’s entrance scene, right after Christy destroys Mark in the first debate, it’s not exactly clear why he’s there. In the scene where Mark files for candidacy, the office worker, Marge, states that the school “has no standards”. This implies that Presley is a public high school.
Gary enters as an external character and stays as such throughout the entire show. We don’t learn what he wants or why he cares about the election. He’s better described as a symbol of corrupt political action committees than an interesting antagonist.
As for Mark, the play states that he wants to become president because it would marginally help his college application, but also because he thought he could make Presley High School better. When it comes to his actual three-and-a-half-point plan, he can only articulate that he wants teacher evaluations from students, greater school spending on the arts, and vending machines. Mark has no personal stake here, and he loses nothing important to him if he doesn’t win.
Christy presumably has a similar reason. She says she wants more vegetarian food in schools, but it’s never explained why it matters to her. The two candidates at the center of the story don’t have clearly mentioned reasons for why they want to win. This is a critical issue that prevented me from fully understanding the story before researching the real-life analogs.
In the scene right before Mark tells Gary of his desire to quit the campaign, Gary is on a call, discussing hiring the Kardashians for promotional purposes and importing real giraffes from Africa. The scale of this story is volatile from scene to scene, and it probably stems from the fact that the allegory is scaled down at times but not at others. The core idea of The Election is a high school student body presidential election used as a metaphor for the US one. However, some aspects aren’t scaled down accordingly. The political action committees are exactly what they are in real life: they produce television ads, and they have real money. At the end of act one, Karl casually tells Mark that his house is on fire after becoming the target of an angry mob. Kyli makes enough money from hosting a cable access news channel to fund Gary’s shenanigans. Zolidis scaled down the actual US media to a local television personality, but the same structure of Super PACs simply wouldn’t work at that level.
Narratively, the play seems to be telling a nihilistic reality of politics. After Mark and Christy find out that Gary is managing both of their campaigns, they agree that Gary is trying to buy the election (for some unknown reason), and they can’t let him win. In the final debate, Christy asks questions intentionally to provoke them into criticizing each other, and they do well at the start, but it eventually devolves into name-calling and pandering for the voters.
This might be a metaphor for how the system always wins in the end, but the actual end of the play is a heartwarming conversation about the two candidates genuinely befriending each other. It seems that the play was trying to be both a satire reflecting real-world problems and a story with evolving characters.
For an allegory that would portray Mark as a pawn in a larger system, there’s not a clear idea of what that system is. Gary, who controls everything, never threatens Mark and leaves in every scene when asked. His role in the plot is spending money to release mean television ads about both candidates and create spectacle.
In the case that this was intentional and the meta-lesson was about how the media only needs spectacle to profit, Kyli still doesn’t work narratively. The exposition sets us up for a public high school election, and unless you already knew the history it was referencing, the scale of the story doesn’t make sense when Kyli reveals her hidden motivations at the end.
Most events in The Election seem to happen because it matches up with the reference of the story. The plot itself doesn’t drive forward inevitably, but because characters and conflicts in the story are created to symbolize things. Consequences don’t come consistently. At the end of act I, Mark’s house burns down and it’s forgotten a page later. Gary spends large sums of money on a high school election and nobody comments on it. Mark and Christy fight to win the election to the extent of insulting each other publicly, but in the end, neither of them do, and they’re apparently fine with it. The effects of their actions don’t come at a logical magnitude, which makes for a very confusing reading experience.
Although my high school’s production of this play came out well and had wonderful energy on the stage, the writing itself doesn’t hold up for someone who didn’t already know the source material beforehand. This was also written in 2012, so this is over a decade old and probably doesn’t represent what Zolidis’s writing is like today. That’s all, and until next time, I am out.