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Maybe every political debate from now on should be held on a night where pretty much everyone has somewhere more important to be.
At last night's debate between the candidates competing for two At-large seats on the D.C. Council, the looming second-round meetup between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama pushed moderators Tom Sherwood and Mark Segraves to throw as many questions as possible at the seven hopefuls in an effort to get the audience home in time for the bigger show. In the span of just under 90 minutes, 20 questions on everything from taxes to singles bans kept the candidates on their toes by denying them the opportunity to be long-winded and evasive. While the format may not have proven terribly informative -- there just isn't much of a chance to display what you're made of in a "Yes" or "No" answer -- it did offer the large audience an amusing ride through the many issues facing the candidates in this year's Council elections.
During the rapid-fire debate, the seven candidates -- Independents Mark Long, Michael Brown and Dee Hunter; Statehood Green David Schwartzman; Republicans Patrick Mara and Carol Schwartz; and Democrat Kwame Brown -- fielded questions on the current budget shortfall, whether or not to bring the Washington Redskins back to the District, whether they support gay marriage, whether they side with Chancellor Michelle Rhee's plans to weaken teacher tenure and pay students, whether the Southeast/Southwest Freeway should be brought down, who each candidate would vote for other than themselves and whether the District should lock the Lerner family out of the new stadium for not paying rent.
As expected, there weren't many obvious differences between many of the candidates on the issues. This is, after all, an overwhelmingly Democratic town, and even Independents and Republicans tend to skew left on most issues. When asked about the recently announced $131 million budget shortfall, the candidates promised to streamline government agencies and reduce waste while maintaining key services. Schwartzman advocated raising taxes on the top five percent of District earners, while Schwartz took a page out of Sen. McCain's book and promoted dumping earmarks from the D.C. budget. No one was willing to support bringing the Redskins back unconditionally, especially if it involved public funds; everyone sided with keeping 7th Street SE in Eastern Market closed to cars on weekends; the majority of the candidates supported re-opening the Franklin shelter or finding a permanent alternative; gay marriage found no dissenters; only Schwartzman expressed opposition to Rhee's plan to offer the option to increase teacher pay in exchange for giving up tenure; no one but Mara said they'd vote to repeal paid sick-leave for part-time employees; and almost everyone dodged the Southeast/Southwest Freeway and single beer sales questions by saying that they would defer to local ANCs. There was even close to unanimous agreement on who the candidates would choose other than themselves for one of the two the At-Large seats -- Council member Kwame Brown. (Strangely, he said he would cast a second for himself before voting for anyone else.)
Photo by sintixerr
The only question that drew diverse answers dealt with Rhee's controversial plan to pay students for performing well. While many candidates either supported the program or refused to take it off the table given the sorry state of District schools, Kwame Brown expressed his concern with what would happen if funding dried up while Schwartzman called it "bribery" and a "bad precedent." Mara actually said that when he first heard of the program, he "threw up a little in (his) mouth," though he said he now wants to give it a chance.
The only real drama of the night was the obvious tension between primary foes Mara and Schwartz. Never once looking at each other (take that, McCain and Obama!) and only ever saying "my opponent" instead of using the more polite "Mr. Mara" and "Council member Schwartz," the two sniped at each other on gay marriage, schools, term limits and paid sick-leave legislation.
As the debate came to a close, Sherwood and Segraves directed a number of questions at individual candidates. Asked to respond to a Post editorial that had endorsed Mara for the primary while accusing Schwartz of being "unrelentingly negative," the write-in candidate countered by saying that she's "unrelentingly optimistic." And when Michael A. Brown was queried about his flyering of car windshields and robo-calls (we reported on both a few days back), he apologized for his "overzealous volunteers" and promised that the robo-calls would stop -- "on November 4." Ironically, cars outside Tyler Elementary School in Southeast, where the debate was held, were flyered by Brown's campaign during the event.
Considering the format and the lack of real ideological diversity among the candidates, it's tough to say whether or not much came of the debate. To their credit, Sherwood and Segraves tried to catch the candidates off-guard, but even then the results weren't that surprising. Fortunately, everyone got home in time for the presidential debate, where, much like the debate they had just come from, there wasn't much of interest to speak of. Maybe Tom Brokaw should have asked the presidential candidates whether or not they would ban the sale of single beers.
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So what you're saying, is that they all pretty much suck, right?
martin: thanks for the write up.
michael brown just can't help being a douche, can he?