Please join the Smith Soc Chicago professional chapter for a private salon dinner and discussion about the 2016 Presidential Election at Nico Osteria on Monday, April 25th. Cocktails will begin at 6:30pm, with dinner to follow. Please RSVP by tomorrow (4/22) to secure your seat at the table.

The 2016 presidential election is already one of the most unpredictable and highly contentious in recent memory – and we are still in the midst of primary season. In fact, five states—PA, MD, CT, RI, and DE—will hold primaries the Tuesday following our dinner.

To date it seems the race has boiled down to a contest, on both sides, between establishment and insurgent candidates. At the same time it has been argued that this election signals the end of the GOP as we know it, a shift to the left for the Democrats, and suggests a looming political realignment on the Left.

To lead our discussion, we’ve invited a special guest for the evening: elections analyst and political essayist Henry Olsen, who will talk with us about his predictions for the upcoming primaries and to kick off a conversation about why the American people are voting the way they are and what this means for the future.

Henry is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. A former president of the Commonwealth Foundation, he has also served in senior leadership roles at the Manhattan Institute and American Enterprise Institute. Henry is the author of a new book, The Four Faces of the Republican Party: The Fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination, which Michael Barone called a "must-read for political junkies."