Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9309040321
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Margie Fisher
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Suckers! The decision to sponsor a debate ensures that an organization will spend weeks, maybe months, haggling with candidates' minions over the trivia of ground rules and format. And, in the end, the sponsoring group will be embarrassed when best-laid plans go wonderfully awry.
Why do they do it? Why, for the ``honor'' (and publicity) of hobnobbing with people who, at least for the campaign season, are pompous and bombastic.
In 1985, the Virginia Retail Merchants Association had the ``honor'' of hosting the first gubernatorial debate between Republican Wyatt Durrette and Democrat Jerry Baliles. The night before, war broke out between the two camps, which were bunked down in separate suites at a Norfolk hotel. As I recall it, the issue had to do with whether the candidates, once on stage, could speak directly to each other, as opposed to through a moderator and a panel of questioners.
Threats were made to call it off. My friend - the late Pat Matheny of Roanoke, who was then public-relations director for VRMA - spent hours on shuttle diplomacy between the two suites.
It was well after midnight before the campaigns agreed that the event - which was billed as the highlight of the VRMA annual meeting, and which had drawn numerous guests and press representatives - would go on in the morning as scheduled.
In 1989, the Virginia Press Association was to sponsor the first gubernatorial debate between Democrat Doug Wilder and Republican Marshall Coleman. Same deal: It was to be the drawing card for the annual meeting of publishers and other newspaper executives at Virginia Beach. ``Working press'' also were swarming all over the place.
Literally minutes before the debate was to begin, pandemonium! The issue was whether the campaigns could film the event, presumably for possible later use in TV commercials. Wilder said that had not been agreed to in the pre-debate negotiations. Coleman said nothing in the ground rules prohibited it. Wilder said Coleman was a low-life, double-crossing crook. Coleman said so's your old man.
The debate was called off and, instead, the candidates held dueling press conferences - with reporters running wildly back and forth between them, carrying allegations of chicanery and criminal intent that the candidates had planned to unload on each other in the debate.
Last weekend, VPA - meeting at the Cavalier hotel at Virginia Beach - again had the ``honor'' of sponsoring the first debates for statewide candidates.
Democrats Don Beyer, seeking re-election as lieutenant governor, and Bill Dolan, candidate for attorney general, were no-shows. They had abruptly backed out of their agreement to go face to face with their respective Republican opponents, Mike Farris and Jim Gilmore.
Beyer's limp excuse was that it was ``too early'' in the campaign season. (Strange, since Beyer was more than eager for early debates in '89 when he - much as Farris is now - was virtually unknown and running against an opponent with high name identification.) Dolan's excuse - equally suspect - was a conflicting family obligation.
The gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Mary Sue Terry and Republican George Allen, did show up. But so did Nancy Spannaus - to raise a ruckus.
Spannaus, a disciple of jailed political extremist Lyndon LaRouche, is running for governor as an independent. Never mind that she has slightly less chance of being elected governor than I do. She has collected the signatures of at least 15,243 registered Virginia voters to get on the ballot; the State Board of Elections has certified her as a bona fide candidate.
And her beef was that the VPA - a group presumably dedicated to freedom of speech - was muzzling her by excluding her from the Terry-Allen debate.
I was at the VPA meeting - to hear Terry and Allen, and also to attend a seminar for editorial-page writers. Editorial-page writers love to argue, to play the devil's advocate, to spout off opinions to see how many holes can be shot in them. They do it daily at editorial-board meetings, at which consensus (sometimes) is reached as to editorial positions they will take in the papers. So naturally, the Spannaus jeremiad inspired the editorial writers at the Cavalier to choose up sides. The discussion went something like this:
By deciding to invite only Terry and Allen, the establishment candidates of the parties of the PACs, the VPA is pimping for major-party domination in the political process, argued the purists. It's damn arrogant of 'em to be setting themselves up as press lords and arbiters of who is and who isn't a legitimate candidate.
But why, asked the pragmatists, should VPA provide a forum for every fruitloop who runs for public office? Should the presidential debates last year have included Lenora Fulani and Andre Marrou? If all the people running for president last year had been at the University of Richmond, it would have been a mud-wrestling match, not a debate. Not even mud-wrestling fans would have watched it.
Sure, said the cynics. Best to include only third-party fruitloops like Perot - guys with billions of dollars to buy some legitimacy.
It's just bad precedent for a journalists' organization to say that only a Democrat and a Republican are viable candidates, said the purists. Snorted the cynics: Yeah, but watch 'em wiggle around that next year if they sponsor a U.S. Senate candidates' debate and Doug Wilder happens to be running as an independent.
C'mon! Apples and oranges, said the pragmatists. Wilder is no fringee, while Spannaus is about as far on the fringe as they come. You want VPA to give legitimacy to the surrogate of a federal convict?
So? said the cynics. Next year, the Republicans may nominate a federal convict, albeit one who stayed out of the pen on a technicality. They gonna exclude Ollie North?
As anyone who knows me might guess, I was too shy and reticent to enter this debate over the debate. Also, it was too hot at the beach to get so het up about it. But on reflection I think this:
VPA officials might have shown more finesse. They might have offered Spannaus a few minutes' spot on the program - as they did for Farris and Gilmore. Nobody would have had to leave the golf course or beach to go hear her if they didn't want to - and likely no one would have. (Heck, they had a hard enough time getting a respectable crowd in to hear Terry and Allen.)
And, as it turned out, Spannaus and a handful of her supporters got much more press attention by demonstrating outside the hotel, against VPA's alleged shabby treatment of her, than she would have gotten had they let her inside the debating hall. (The demonstration made for better television than the Terry-Allen talking heads.)
But, on balance, I think VPA made the right judgment call. Barring an unforeseen act of God, either Terry or Allen will be Virginia's next governor. The intent of the debate was to improve the political process by shedding light, not heat, on their candidacies.
If and when public-opinion polls give Spannaus even a peashooter's shot at winning, then definitely she should be included in candidates' debates. At the moment, though, she is not even a blip on public opinion's radar screen. Her participation in debates would simply distract from whatever value the debates have in the political process - and it's not VPA's or the news media's role to cause distractions.
For that matter, neither are they obliged to see that every little dogma has its day.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB