The 2026 LCMS Convention will fill seats on officers, boards, commissions, and boards of regents across roughly two dozen ballots. Once the nominating votes were counted and the slates winnowed, the resulting set of published candidate bios lists one hundred fifty unique people across fifteen distinct parent slates, with one hundred sixty-four slate entries once cross-listings count (twenty-four people stand on more than one parent slate). The coverage on this site treats the slate, by slate, as a political fact and a directory entry. This is the appendix that treats the whole pool, in aggregate, as a distribution — and looks at where it bunches.
All counts come from the published Biographical Synopses and Statements of Nominees parsed into structured records. Gender is inferred from profession, spouse-field, and seat-class signals, with the eighteen edge cases confirmed by hand. Age is structured only for the twenty-four bios in §I–III (President, First VP, and Regional VP); the inline format used for the remaining one hundred twenty-six bios doesn’t carry a birth year, so age stats are reported on that subset and labeled as such. Postgraduate degrees follow the same pattern: a structured “other degree” field exists only for the §I–III tabular bios, so the postgraduate counts below describe that subset, not the candidate pool. The wider corpus carries many more postgraduate credentials in narrative form than the structured extraction picks up. One additional caveat: the six §I–III “other degree” entries include one honorary credential, a LittD awarded to Scott C. Sailer at Concordia University–St. Paul’s May 6, 2023 commencement, which our initial extraction misattributed to Eric T. Lange. The earned-postgraduate counts below exclude the honorary LittD and report on five candidates.
The pool by size
Two slates dominate the count. The College and University Boards of Regents carries fifty-two candidates spread across the six Concordia Universities (it’s six separate sub-slates stacked under one parent label). The First Vice-President of the Synod slate is the next largest at twenty — the cap set by , which limits the First-VP nomination list to twenty names ahead of the President-elect’s post-election selection of five candidates. After those two, the rest of the slates span a two-to-fifteen range. Seminary Regents at fifteen, then a tight band at twelve (LCMS BoD, BNM, BIM), then LCEF at eight, CPH at seven, CHI at six, President and CTCR at five, the LCMS Foundation at four, and Secretary, the Concordia University System Board, and the Regional VP cross-listings each at two.
Largest slate
College and University Boards of Regents
52 candidates across six institutional boards (Chicago, Irvine, Nebraska, St. Paul, Texas, and Wisconsin/Ann Arbor, plus the two seminary boards listed separately under their own parent slate). The slate functions less like a single ballot and more like a holding tag the workbook stacks the six Concordia BoR sub-slates under. The individual sub-slates run six to eleven candidates each (Concordia Nebraska is largest at 11, Concordia Texas smallest at 6).
Closest race on the ballot
Secretary of the Synod
Two candidates head-to-head. Richard Charles Rudowske Jr. (also on the Seminary Boards of Regents slate) and John W. Sias (the incumbent). Two other parent slates also carry exactly two entries: the Concordia University System Board of Directors and the Regional Vice-Presidents cross-listing pair. (The senior-officer Regional VP sub-ballots have a different shape, running five candidates per region.) Secretary is the only top-of-ticket office that resolves cleanly as a binary race — President has five names, First VP has twenty, and each Regional VP runs five.
Gender
Counted by unique person, the pool is 132 male, 18 female — about an 88 / 12 split. Counted by slate entry (so cross-listings count multiply), the pool is 142 male, 22 female across 164 slate entries, about 87 / 13. Every candidate whose first cut returned an inference-unknown was confirmed by hand against the bio narrative or against external context (the eighteen names that were ambiguous on conventional gender are documented as overrides in the compute script). The pool now has no remaining inference gaps.
Most female-represented slate
Concordia Publishing House Board of Directors
3 of 7 candidates female (43%). The CPH board slate is the only one where the female share clears forty percent. The Biographical Synopses page for the slate lists four laypersons in addition to the commissioned and ordained seats, which mechanically widens the eligible pool. Runners-up tie at 25%: the Board for National Mission (3 of 12) and the Lutheran Church Extension Fund Board of Directors (2 of 8). The Seminary Boards of Regents follow at 20% (3 of 15), the College and University Boards of Regents at 17% (9 of 52 across six sub-slates), and the Board for International Mission at 17% (2 of 12).
Most male-only slates
Nine slates with zero female candidates
President, First Vice-President, Secretary, LCMS Board of Directors, Commission on Theology and Church Relations, LCMS Foundation Board of Trustees, Concordia University System Board of Directors, Concordia Historical Institute Board of Governors, and the cross-listed Regional Vice-Presidents slates are all men. For the executive offices and CTCR this is bylaw-mechanical: limits ordained-minister seats to the rostered ordained, and the LCMS does not ordain women. The all-male LCMS Board of Directors slate is the most interesting non-mechanical case — three of the four seats up for election in 2026 are lay-restricted (the fourth is for a commissioned minister), and the slate has nine lay nominees competing for those three lay seats, yet all nine are male.
Most female-tilted state
South Dakota
2 of 4 nominees female (50%). A small base so the percentage swings, but South Dakota is the only state of at least three nominees where women are at least half the count. Tennessee and Maryland follow at 33% each (1 of 3 in each). Illinois at 4 of 14 (29%) and Michigan at 2 of 7 (29%) are next. Texas has eleven nominees and none are women. (Washington’s tiny two-candidate base also splits one-and-one, but the sample is too small to read against the rest.)
Age and generations
Only twenty-four bios in the pool carry a structured birth year — the tabular §I–III bios for President, First VP, and Regional VP candidates. Across that subset the median age is sixty-one, the mean is 59.2, with a range from forty to seventy-four. Generation-wise, Boomers and Gen X tie exactly: eleven each, with two Millennials and no Silent-generation or Gen-Z candidates in the structured subset. For the inline-format bios (boards, commissions, regents) we don’t have ages on file; the pool likely skews older still.
Oldest candidate on the ballot
Victor J. Belton
Born 1952. 74 at the convention. Belton is running for First Vice-President — the only candidate on a senior-officer ballot born before 1957, and the oldest single candidate in the structured-age subset. The runner-up is David A. Davis (born 1957, 69 at the convention), also a First-VP candidate. Matthew C. Harrison, the incumbent Synod President seeking another term, is born 1962 and 64 in 2026.
Youngest candidate on a senior ballot
Sean A. Willman
Born 1986. 40 at the convention. Running for First Vice-President. The next youngest is Timothy P. (Tim) Ahlman (born 1981, 45 at the convention), cross-listed on both the First Vice-President slate and the West- Southwest Regional Vice-President ballot from Gilbert, AZ. Willman and Ahlman are the only two Millennials in the structured-age subset; below them the corpus drops into bio-format territory that doesn’t carry birth year, so the actual floor of the pool is below this — we just can’t see it structurally.
Tightest generational tie
Boomer / Gen X — 11 each
Of the twenty-four bios with structured ages, eleven are Boomers (born 1946–1964) and eleven are Gen X (1965–1980). The cut runs almost exactly through 1964 / 1965 — the two most common birth years in the subset, tied with three candidates each. Whatever generational tipping is going to happen in the leadership of the Synod is already visible in this slice of the bench.
Geography
The pool is heavily concentrated. Sixteen candidates live in Missouri, fourteen in Illinois, eleven in Texas, ten each in California and Nebraska. The top five states alone account forsixty-one of the one hundred fifty candidates — just over forty percent. By district the rankings shift slightly: Missouri and Texas tie at eleven, Nebraska at ten, then California–Nevada–Hawaii (7), Southern Illinois (7), Southeastern (7), English (6).
Exhibit · State concentration
Where the 150 candidates live — top five states account for 41% of the pool.
candidates
Most over-represented city
St. Louis, MO
7 candidates. Concordia Seminary and the LCMS International Center together account for most of the cluster. The runners-up are Houston, TX (4), Alexandria, VA (3), and Fort Wayne, IN (3) — Fort Wayne’s share being almost entirely CTSFW faculty and adjacent.
The four-city pipeline
St. Louis / Houston / Alexandria / Fort Wayne
17 of 150 nominees (11.3%) live in just those four cities. Two of the four house a national LCMS institutional address — St. Louis (Concordia Seminary plus the International Center) and Fort Wayne (CTSFW). Houston and Alexandria don’t host a Synod institution; Alexandria’s cluster comes largely from a Northern-Virginia parish triangle around Immanuel and Our Savior that also submits an outsized share of overtures — see Article VII on the overtures side.
Most over-represented district
Missouri / Texas (tied)
11 candidates each. Missouri’s concentration is almost entirely a function of housing two of the three Synod institutional addresses (CSL + the International Center); Texas’s is more spread. Nebraska is just behind at ten, with a tight Concordia University Nebraska cluster anchoring it.
Names and the German surname
The surname distribution looks exactly the way LCMS observers would expect it to look. The most common surname in the pool is Lange, with three carriers across three different slates (Peter K. for First VP and President, Eric T. for First VP and Regional VP, Michael R. for the Seminary Boards of Regents). After that a cluster of two-carrier names: Cloeter, Skopak, Preus, Hinz. Most of the corpus’s most common surnames are recognizably German.
Most common surname
Lange
3 carriers. Peter K. Lange (running for both First Vice-President and President), Eric T. Lange (also First VP, and nominated for Regional Vice-President in the West-Southwest Region), and Michael R. Lange (the Seminary Boards of Regents). Peter K. and Michael R. are brothers; Eric T.’s relationship to them, if any, isn’t recorded in the bios. (And to head off a likely confusion: this Michael R. Lange isn’t the Mike Lange currently serving as California-Nevada-Hawaii District President — a separate person who isn’t on the 2026 slate.) Each is recognizably the kind of German Lutheran surname that has been carrying LCMS office for a century and a half.
Most common first name
David
7 carriers. Followed closely by Mark (6), Matthew (5), Jeffrey (5), John (5), and Michael (4). Seven Davids, six Marks, five Matthews — three of the four evangelists, basically the lectionary calendar for the Easter season. Three Pauls, two Peters, two Timothys, two Jacobs round out the apostolic representation. Not a single Samuel, not a single Aaron, not a single Benjamin among the most-common names — though we do have one Benjamin T. Ball.
Most theophoric first name
Matthew and John, tied at five
Matthew (“gift of God”) and John (“God has been gracious”) tie at five carriers each. The incumbent Synod President is one of the Matthews. Below them, Michael (“Who is like God?”) is on four bios, and Jonathan (“God has given”) and Joel (“Yahweh is God”) each on two. David and Mark, despite their biblical and apostolic resonance, aren’t theophoric — David is Hebrew for “beloved”; Mark is from Latin Marcus, originally referencing Mars.
Senior-officer nomination tallies
The senior-officer offices are the only slates where raw nomination votes are public — congregations each cast a nominating ballot, and the workbook publishes the tallies. Eighteen offices’ worth of board / commission / regents seats are decided differently: the Committee for Convention Nominations picks the final slate from the pool, so there is no public per-nominee tally to publish. The President, First VP, and Regional VP slates do publish per-nominee counts, and the distribution is wildly skewed.
Most nominations for President
Matthew C. Harrison — 900 votes
51% of all 1,758 congregational ballots cast for President. The incumbent. Second place is Joel D. Biermann at 334 (19%); third is Benjamin T. Ball at 311 (18%). The remaining two top-five nominees are Brady L. Finnern (148 votes) and Peter K. Lange (65 votes). Below the top five the ballot has a long tail of single-digit-vote nominees — the deep tail is dozens of one- and two-vote names. caps the President-elect slate at the top five consenting nominees, so the tail doesn’t advance.
Exhibit · President nominations
The top five names that survive to the President-elect ballot, against the 1,758 congregational ballots cast.
nominating votes
Most nominations for First Vice-President
Peter K. Lange — 804 votes
80% of all 1,004 first-VP nominating ballots. The single most lopsided senior-officer race in the workbook by a comfortable margin. Lange already serves as First Vice-President; the runner-up Christopher S. Esget is at fifty votes — sixteen times less than the leader. After Esget the tail descends quickly: Allan Buss 36, Jeffrey Cloeter 21, Jamison Hardy 12, Tim Ahlman 10, then a long run of single-digit-vote nominees with a seven- way tie at three votes apiece at the bottom. The statistical shape of the First-VP ballot is closer to a ratification than an election.
Exhibit · First Vice-President nominations
Peter K. Lange's 804 nominations against the rest of the top six and the seven-way tie at three votes at the bottom of the ballot.
nominating votes
Power-law check
The top nominee dominates; the tail is single votes
All three published senior-officer ballots are top-heavy. The President race fits a clean power-law shape (51% / 19% / 18% / 8% / 4% across the top five). The First VP race is more lopsided still: Lange’s 80% leaves the runner-up at 5% and the third-place finisher at 4%. The Regional VP races run somewhere in between (Ball’s 70% on the cross-region tally with runners-up in the 10%-and-below band). In all three categories, the deep tail consists of single-vote and two-vote nominations from neighboring congregations. Whether this reflects deference to incumbency, the absence of organized opposition, or the bottom-up nominating mechanism doing exactly what it was designed to do is left to the reader.
Cross-listed candidates
Twenty-four candidates appear on more than one parent slate. The Biographical Synopses prints the bio once and adds an “Also candidate for: …” line under it. Most of the cross-listings are within a coherent neighborhood — First VP + Regional VP for the same region, or two oversight boards — but seven span the executive / oversight divide in a way that will require the candidate to declare a single seat if elected to more than one ().
Most cross-listed candidates
Five candidates on three slates each
Five candidates carry the maximum — three different parent slates each. Paul C. Hinz sits on the Board for International Mission, a College/University Board of Regents (St. Paul), and the Concordia Publishing House Board of Directors — three institutional layers, all oversight. The other four follow the same pattern at the senior-officer end: a First-VP candidate also nominated for Regional VP of their region and also seated on a Regents slate. Jeffrey P. Cloeter (First VP + RVP Central + CU Regents St. Paul), Lawrence R. Rast Jr. (First VP + RVP West-Southwest + CU Regents Chicago), Scott C. Sailer (First VP + RVP Great Plains + CU Regents Chicago), and Jeffrey E. Skopak (First VP + RVP East-Southeast + Seminary Regents Fort Wayne). If elected to more than one, each picks.
Most over-the-aisle cross-listings
Seven candidates crossing the executive / oversight divide
Seven cross-listed candidates appear on a senior-officer ballot and an oversight-board slate. Three have a board as their primary listing with a Regional VP cross-listing on top: Richard Charles Rudowske Jr. (Secretary + Seminary Regents CSL), Michael P. Schuermann (BNM Central + Regional VP Central), and David Paul Ramirez (CHI + Regional VP Great Lakes). The other four are First-VP candidates with a Regents seat as an alternate — Lawrence R. Rast Jr., Jeffrey P. Cloeter, Scott C. Sailer, and Jeffrey E. Skopak, each also nominated for Regional VP of their region and seated on a Concordia or seminary board. The other seventeen cross-listed candidates stay within a single lane — ten all-executive (mostly First VP + Regional VP for the same region) and seven all-oversight (covered next).
The stay-in-lane cross-listings
Seventeen candidates within a single lane — sixteen on two slates, Hinz on three
Of the twenty-four cross-listed candidates, seventeen stay within a single lane — either both senior-officer or both oversight. All-executive (10): Benjamin Ball and Joel Biermann (both President + Regional VP Central); Peter Lange (First VP + President); and seven First-VP candidates cross-listed as Regional VP of their own region — Tim Ahlman (West-Southwest), Alfonso Espinosa (West-Southwest), Christopher Esget (East-Southeast), Jamison Hardy (Great Lakes), Eric T. Lange (West-Southwest), Dien Ashley Taylor (East-Southeast), and Sean A. Willman (Great Lakes). All-oversight (7): Paul C. Hinz (BIM + CPH + CU Regents St. Paul, the only three-slate stay-in-lane); John Krause (LCMS BoD + CU Regents Nebraska); Neil Spencer Vanderbush (BNM + CU Regents Texas); Rande T. Casaday (BNM + CU Regents Wisconsin); Sarah Rausch (BNM + CPH); Sarah Elizabeth Gaffney (Seminary Regents CSL + CU Regents Irvine — the only female cross-listed onto two different regents slates); and Paul P. Edmon (CTCR + CU Regents Irvine).
Education and the Concordia pipeline
Education is structured for twenty-four of the one hundred fifty candidates — the same §I–III tabular subset that carries birth year (twenty-one report a college, nineteen a seminary, six a structured “other degree,” with most candidates reporting more than one of the three). The “six other degrees” figure describes the §I–III tabular field, not the corpus. Many candidates outside that subset hold postgraduate credentials that are named in their inline-format bios but do not survive into a structured field. The Secretary-of-the-Synod race carries two such examples by itself: the incumbent John W. Sias holds an MS (1999) and PhD (2005) in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, followed by an MDiv from CTSFW (2009); his opponent Richard Charles Rudowske Jr. holds a 2022 PhD from CTSFW for work on the Shekgalagari Bible translation project. Several candidates on the LCMS Board of Directors and other oversight slates carry comparable credentials. Read the numbers below against the §I–III subset they describe. Among them, the typical path is a Concordia undergraduate institution feeding into a Synod seminary. Eighteen of the twenty-one candidates with an undergrad listed — 86% — attended a school in the Concordia University System (the six current Concordia universities, the two Synod seminaries, plus the now-closed historic Concordias at Bronxville, NY and Ann Arbor, MI). On the seminary side the concentration is sharper still: fourteen of the nineteen attended one of the two Synod seminaries, with Fort Wayne (CTSFW) carrying nine graduates and St. Louis (CSL) five.
Top undergrad among those who report
Concordia Wisconsin / Ann Arbor (3) and Concordia Chicago (3) tied
Both report three undergraduate alumni in the structured subset, with Concordia Nebraska (2), Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (2), and Concordia Irvine (1) following. The numbers are small but the distribution reads exactly like the Concordia system in miniature — Mequon and River Forest carrying disproportionate weight on the parish-pastor pipeline.
The CUS pipeline, in three numbers
86% undergrad · 74% of MDivs · 80% of §I–III earned postgrads
Counted three ways, the same pipeline keeps surfacing. Eighteen of the twenty-one candidates who report a college attended a Concordia University System school (86%). Of the nineteen who report a seminary degree (M.Div.-equivalent), fourteen (74%) had a CUS undergrad first. And of the five §I–III bios that carry an earned postgraduate degree (PhD, STM, DMin, or MA — the sixth “other degree” entry, Sailer’s honorary LittD, is excluded as honorary rather than academic), four (80%) have a CUS undergrad behind the terminal credential. That third figure is a §I–III reading and not a corpus reading: the wider candidate pool carries materially more postgraduate credentials, including the PhDs held by both Secretary-of-the-Synod candidates, that the structured extraction does not capture. The non-CUS undergraduate outliers are the three exceptions that prove the rule: Brady L. Finnern (Gustavus Adolphus, St. Peter, MN), Matthew C. Harrison (Morningside University, Sioux City, IA), and Christopher S. Esget (Berklee College of Music). The first two are still Lutheran-collegiate-tradition adjacent; the third — a jazz-guitar undergrad — is the corpus’s only genuinely outside-the-pipe credential.
Exhibit · The CUS pipeline, three ways
Among the 24 candidates with structured education fields, each cohort traces back to the Concordia system.
Top seminary
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne — 9 of 14 reporting
64%. Fort Wayne dominates the seminary column in the structured subset, with St. Louis at five (36%). The ratio in the broader Synod is closer to even; among the candidates whose bios report a seminary, CTSFW runs nearly two-to-one. The pipeline read — CUW or CUC to CTSFW — matches the older confessional bench of the Synod.
The Concordia-loop graduates
Concordia Wisconsin → Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (2)
The single most common college-to-seminary pipeline in the structured subset is CUW Mequon → CSL St. Louis, with two graduates following it exactly. A second pipeline reads CTSFW for both college and seminary — almost certainly a parsing artifact (some older candidates had a Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne entry that the extractor mis-labeled as a duplicate of their CTSFW seminary record); worth noting but not a real pattern.
Esoteric deep cuts
Incumbents on the ballot
38 of 150 candidates (25%)
Exactly a quarter of the published slate is sitting incumbents standing for re-election. puts them on the ballot automatically — no re-nomination required — so the incumbency share is a structural floor more than a competitive read. The other seventy-five percent of the slate is fresh-named candidates from the Committee for Convention Nominations’ vetting.
The most prolific parish
Pastor is, by a long way, the most common profession
30 candidates list “Pastor” as their profession. About a fifth of the pool. The next most common profession is Attorney at three. Then a single retired CPA, a retired Air Force officer, a Deputy Secretary of State of an unidentified state, a mathematics professor, an orthopedic surgeon, and a research computing specialist at MIT. The secular-career tail is thin and varied; the clerical head is heavy and uniform.
Most common congregation name
Two-way tie at six — Our Savior · Trinity
Of the ninety-eight nominees whose bios name a home congregation, two names share the top of the ranking at six congregations each: Our Savior and Trinity. Messiah and Good Shepherd follow at five apiece. Below them, a three-way cluster at four (Faith, Immanuel, Zion), then Memorial and Holy Cross at three each, and a long tail of singletons. Geographically the top names sprawl — the six Our Saviors sit in CO, CA, SD, WI, TX, and WA; the six Trinities in MT, IL, MD, IA, TX, and WI — so the ties aren’t a single-district artifact. The theological reading is the interesting bit: all four of the top names (Our Savior / Trinity / Messiah / Good Shepherd) are Christological or Trinitarian rather than civic, and the top ten contains no “First Lutheran,” no “St. Paul’s,” no place-naming convention at all. LCMS congregations name themselves for what they confess, not for where they sit.
Exhibit · Congregation names
The top eight congregation names across the 98 nominees who report a parish — Christology and Trinity dominate.
congregations
Most unusual profession
Research Computing Specialist, MIT
Paul P. Edmon, on the ballot for the Commission on Theology and Church Relations and for a College/University Board of Regents. He’s in the only candidate bio in the entire corpus that brings high-performance computing as a credential. His personal statement explicitly proposes to bring his MIT research background to bear on the CTCR’s “clear and timely theological treatises.” A second standout: an attorney/Deputy Secretary of State (on the LCMS Board of Directors slate) who is the only candidate in the corpus whose elected-government experience meaningfully outranks their ecclesiastical experience.
Average family size
3.9 children among those who report
Of the eighteen candidates whose bios report a structured number of children, the average is 3.9, the range is 1 to 8. One candidate reports eight children, one reports seven, and two each report six and five. The distribution is right-skewed: six families have five or more children; five have two or fewer. The sample is the structured tabular subset only; inline-format bios don’t carry a children field.
Longest LCMS tenure
Glenn R. Pittsford — 75 years as a member
Pittsford’s 75 years as an LCMS member is the pool’s ceiling. He’s a candidate for the LCMS Foundation Board of Trustees, in College Station, TX. Across the 137 candidates who report a structured “years member of Synod congregations” count, the median is 50 years, the mean 47, the range 4 to 75.
Shortest LCMS tenure
Kevin W. Austin — 4 years as a member
The pool’s floor. Austin is on the Board for National Mission slate from Chandler, AZ — an adult-convert candidate whose four-year tenure runs more than twelve times shorter than the corpus median of fifty years. The runner-up at the short end is Gary C. Nelson at nine years, on a College/University Board of Regents slate from Rohnert Park, CA. Of the 137 candidates who report a structured tenure, only those two come in under ten years.
Corrections
Reader corrections received since publication, in the order they came in, with the resulting changes to the article.
- Lange brothers.A reader notes that Peter K. Lange and Michael R. Lange are brothers, and that this Michael R. Lange is not the Mike Lange currently serving as California-Nevada-Hawaii District President. The bios do not record either point. The “Most common surname” award is updated accordingly, and a disambiguating parenthetical added.
- Schuermann and Ramirez in the cross-listing tally. A reader notes that the article missed Michael P. Schuermann (Board for National Mission Central + Regional VP Central) and David Paul Ramirez (Concordia Historical Institute + Regional VP Great Lakes), both of whom cross the executive / oversight divide. The discovery prompts a fuller audit: every candidate on more than one parent slate is now counted, and the total rises from twelve to twenty-four. The cross-listing section is reorganized into five three-slate carriers, seven over-the-aisle, and seventeen stay-in-lane.
- Postgraduate degrees in inline-format bios. A reader points out that the structured “other degree” field captures only the §I–III tabular subset and undercounts the corpus. The Secretary-of-the- Synod race is the example used: John W. Sias holds MS (1999) and PhD (2005) degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign followed by an MDiv from CTSFW (2009), and Richard Charles Rudowske Jr. holds a 2022 PhD from CTSFW for work on Shekgalagari Bible translation. Neither survives into our structured extraction. The methodology note and the Education-section intro are updated to acknowledge the undercount.
- Sailer’s honorary LittD.The same reader notes that the LittD listed in our data was misattributed to Eric T. Lange and actually belongs to Scott C. Sailer, who received it as an honorary Doctor of Letters at Concordia University–St. Paul’s commencement on May 6, 2023. In the United States, the LittD is usually an honorary degree. The structured field is corrected, the LittD excluded from the earned- postgraduate count, and the §I–III earned-postgrad CUS-undergrad rate updated from four of six (67%) to four of five (80%).
- Internal QA pass.A round-five audit surfaced five smaller issues. The First-Vice-President chart kicker, which had said “top eight,” is corrected to describe what the chart actually shows (Lange plus the rest of the top six and the seven-way tie at three votes). The pre-winnowing pool title enumeration, which had summed to 399 of 442, now acknowledges the 43 nominees with no structured title or a non-standard style. The Closest-race award’s “three other slates” with two entries is corrected to two (CUS Board and the RVP cross-listing pair). The stay-in-lane award’s subject line is reframed to acknowledge that Hinz, one of the seventeen, is on three slates rather than two. PersonRef wrappers are added for Michael P. Schuermann, Alfonso O. Espinosa, and Dien Ashley Taylor, whose directory entries existed but were not linked in the cross-listing awards.
The full nominee pool, before winnowing
442 candidates submitted nominating votes
The 150 names on the published slates are the survivors of a much larger pool. The full pre-winnowing nominee pool for 2026 lists 442 people with 130 Rev., 119 Mr., 70 Rev. Dr., 46 Dr., 21 Mrs., 8 Ms., and 5 Deaconesses by title — 399 in those seven categories. The remaining 43 entries split into 38 nominees with no structured title field and a small handful (5) carrying non-standard styles (Judge, military rank, the Honorable). The top states in the broader pool are Illinois (39), Michigan (39), Missouri (39), Nebraska (38), and Minnesota (32) — almost the same top five as the post-winnowing ballot, just with Michigan and Minnesota outpacing Texas in the broader pool but falling behind in the final slate.