OUR STORY

“The time will come when Winter will ask you what you were doing all Summer.” (Henry Clay)

The predecessor to the Institute, the Modern Whig Party, was first organized in late 2007 by veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who were dismayed, even then, by their nation's deepening ideological divide. Clearly, a large number of their fellow citizens were feeling the same way; within a year of its creation, the Modern Whig Party had attracted more than 25,000 supporters nationally.

The USA Whig Party and Veterans Party of America merged with the Modern Whig Party shortly after its founding, and Mike Lebowitz became the first national chair. Lebowitz, a Washington, D.C. attorney and advocate for veterans' issues, had served in Iraq as an elite paratrooper in the Pathfinder Company of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army.

The Party announced its first victory with the election of Ken Belcher as Constable of Lee County, Alabama in November 2008. In 2009, Gene L. Baldassari sought a seat in the New Jersey State Assembly, running under the Modern Whig banner to represent the 14th Assembly District. Although he was defeated, Baldassari's run benefited from the widespread support of the national Whig membership and positive reviews from the local media.

On Dec. 12-13, 2009, the Modern Whig Party held its first national leadership council meeting in Washington, D.C. The party's bylaws and charter were published shortly thereafter, with the official name recorded as The Modern Whig Party of the United States of America.

On June 22, 2010, the American Centrist Party merged with the Modern Whig Party. Andrew Evans, the former American Centrist Party national chair, was appointed the chair of the Modern Whig Party after the merger. The next month the Center Party also merged with the Whigs, and in November the National Centrist Party joined the fold. 

During the 2010 election three Whig candidates ran for public office: Jeff Vanke, a college professor, and Kenny Golden, a retired commodore, ran for the U.S. Congress in Virginia. Lalig Musserian, an Armenian immigrant and owner of a small business, ran for state representative in Massachusetts.

All three candidates did well enough in their campaigns to spark a spurt of growth in the Modern Whig Party's membership, and all three received extensive news coverage in local papers, on web TV programs and on national radio shows. The Modern Whig Party was also featured in Time magazine, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and on CNN.com during the 2010 election cycle.

The election results -- the three Whig candidates averaged double-digit support on Election Day, with a high of 22 percent of the vote -- were a good, solid step forward for the Modern Whig Party. Clearly, the message of pragmatic, principled government was already finding an audience.

But over time the realities of our first-past-the-post electoral system became too much for one independent party to overcome. Moreover, the barriers to ballot access erected by the two legacy parties, especially in the more populous states, prevented the MWP from gaining the necessary traction to be able to effectively run candidates for national, statewide or even local office.

Other independent parties were of course experiencing the same challenges and obstructions. To try and break the logjam, a group of leaders gathered in Denver, Colo. in the late summer of 2018 to negotiate a merger of independents to form a new, and much larger, third party — and the Alliance Party was born. The merger was completed in January 2019, the Modern Whig Party’s underlying corporation was dissolved, and the party — along with its partners in the merger — ceased to exist.

That did not, however, mark the end of the Whig movement. Before formally disbanding, the MWP Executive Committee voted to transfer the party’s remaining assets (the web domains, trademarks, national social media pages, etc.) to a new entity: the Modern Whig Institute. The purpose was to carry on our work beyond the boundaries of electoral politics. The goal was to create a new social institution to present the Whig worldview to the public at large, serve as a facilitator for our membership’s civic engagement, and function as a platform for policy development through discussion and debate.

Since the Whig approach is, by nature and habit, both rooted in tradition and fearless of innovation, that’s true of the Institute as well. On the one hand we are, in the best and most ordinary sense of the term, a classic American voluntary civic association, something fairly unique in the world of think tanks. For instance, we highly encourage our members to engage their own local issues through our Community Roundtables, to gather ‘round and discuss the matters closest to hearth and home and find ways to improve the places where they live.

But we also thoroughly embrace all four elements of our technical classification under the law: the Institute is indeed a “civic research and education foundation.” We are built on principle, but we were born of inquiry and believe the best place to start is by asking the right questions first. We consider it our duty to educate just as we learn ourselves; to share our conclusions, insights and proposals with the wider world. We are committed to fostering civil debate; to driving the Great Conversation toward common sense solutions. And we believe ordinary citizens, qualified experts, elected officials and significant community stakeholders all have a contribution to make to our political, social and economic progress.

Finally, our belief in American boosterism is both boundless and unshakeable. We have proven our worth. Throughout our nation’s history we have built, grown and sustained our communities from the ground up, creating them as we went along to answer our needs and embody our ambitions. The evidence is all around us.

But in many ways our faith has flagged, and our nation has lost some of the classic can-do attitude which has always marked the true character of our People. With the dedication and participation of our members — our fellow Americans, of all stripes, working together in a spirit of patriotism and civic responsibility — the Modern Whig Institute is committed to capturing that spirit once again.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.