If this year’s crop of candidates spent as much time talking about issues as they’ve spent debating how many debates they will attend — and under what conditions — Maine voters may have actually gained valuable information to help them make choices on Nov. 4.
Voters are lost and disrespected amid all the complaining about formats and who is or is not invited to participate. Debates are meant as a place where voters can see the candidates answer questions and talk with one another. In some debates, the audience also can participate in the questioning. A one-on-one interview with a candidate is interesting; a debate can be more informative because of the unpredictability and interaction.
In the gubernatorial race, the one constant is that independent Eliot Cutler wants to debate his opponents. If only one attends, that is fine. Both is better. But, he’ll even show up if neither of his opponents do. He’d really like to debate both Republican Gov. Paul LePage and Democrat Mike Michaud 16 times, once in each county.
“At the very least, the people of Maine should expect us to come together, defend our ideas and debate the issues facing our state,” Cutler said in a prepared statement on Monday. “It’s time for LePage and Michaud to stop playing games.”
LePage is hardest to pin down. He showed up at an energy forum put on by E2Tech in Portland earlier this month, but he left when he said the format was changed. The event was long billed as the first time the three men would appear on the same stage. Each was slated to make his own 30-minute presentation.
Then, Monday, the governor said he wouldn’t appear on a stage with Michaud because a group that supports Michaud is running an ad that says LePage described Social Security as welfare, a statement LePage later backed away from.
Until Michaud renounces the ad, LePage won’t debate him, the governor said.
“At my age, at 65, I can choose what I want to do and not do,” LePage told reporters Tuesday at the State House. “I have the right not to stand on a stage with someone who falsified information, and I choose not to.”
But then there were rumblings that LePage, after all, hadn’t really backed away from the debates he has already committed to attend.
Nevermind the hypocrisy of LePage, who has remained silent while his surrogates have lied about Michaud suggesting Sen. Susan Collins performs graphic sex acts and snuck onto a private conference call and then lied about it.
For his part, Michaud had said he would debate Cutler, but only if LePage were there, too. But, at a press conference Tuesday in response to LePage’s remarks, Michaud said he would attend all six debates his campaign has agreed to whether LePage is there or not.
The first one is scheduled for Oct. 8 with the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce.
The debate over debates has spread to the 2nd Congressional District race as well. Democrat Emily Cain says she will only attend debates with Republican Bruce Poliquin if the third person in the race, independent Blaine Richardson, is invited. Poliquin is reluctant to debate Richardson, who finished a respectable second with 39 percent of the vote in the 2nd District Republican primary against Kevin Raye in 2012.
Debates should be a “conversation we want to have with Maine people,” Richardson, a retired Navy captain from Belfast, said in July.
Holding debates hostage may serve a political end, but it does a disservice to voters.