Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/1422220We spend the hour on Green politics and how third party candidates are being blocked from taking part in debates. We begin in New York, where the League of Women Voters has withdrawn its sponsorship of three debates in New York because Green Party candidates were excluded from participation. We’re joined by Green Party Senate Candidate Howie Hawkins and League of Women Voters analyst Betsey Swan. [includes rush transcript]
Today we continue with our coverage of the mid-term elections. The League of Women Voters has withdrawn its sponsorship of three debates in New York because Green Party candidates were excluded from participation. Two of those debates were between candidates running for Attorney General. The Democratic candidate is Andrew Cuomo and the Republican is Jeanine Pirro. Rachel Treichler is the Green Party candidate. Sources from the two stations sponsoring the debates told Metroland, an alternative weekly in Albany, that it was Cuomo’s camp which refused to participate in the debates if Treichler were to be included.
The League also withdrew its sponsorship of a debate between Democratic Senator Hilary Clinton and Republican Challenger John Spencer after Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins was excluded from taking part. In a press release announcing their decision, the League stated that they had determined that the Republican, Democrat and Green candidates were all bona fide contestants and should have all been included in the debates.
Today we spend the hour on Green politics and how third party candidates are being blocked from taking part in debates.
- Howie Hawkins. Green candidate for US Senate in New York.
- Betsey Swan. Legislative Analyst for League of Women Voters, New York State.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: Today, we’ll talk about Green Party politics and how third party candidates are being blocked from taking part in debates. Howie Hawkins joins us here in Democracy Now!’s studios. And from Albany, we’re joined by Betsey Swan. She’s the Legislative Analyst with the League of Women Voters, New York State. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Howie Hawkins, why don't you begin? Tell us how the process works, how the debates are set up.
HOWIE HAWKINS: Well, you have groups like the League of Women Voters that try to participate. What I heard from them is that they were negotiating with their corporate sponsors, which would be the corporate broadcast media, and, I would assume, the corporate-sponsored candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton. My hunch is that broadcast media felt she’s the show, and if she won’t show, it’s not worth doing the show for the broadcast media. So I don’t have direct confirmation that she did the same thing Cuomo did, but that’s my hunch. That’s been my experience in running for local races and trying to get in debates in Syracuse.
AMY GOODMAN: Betsey Swan, why don't you lay out for us what these negotiations were? How was the League of Women Voters involved?
BETSEY SWAN: Well, the League has a policy that we apply in determining what candidates we will invite to participate in our debates. The policy was last modified in 1992. The board of directors invites third-party candidates to submit materials and information about their candidacies to the state League. The board reviews these materials and makes a determination about whether a candidate is a bona fide contestant.
Among the standards that the League employs are the candidate’s constitutional eligibility to run for office, ballot access, compliance with financial filing requirements, and demonstration of significant voter interest and support in the candidacy. And the things we look at are evidence of a formal statewide campaign with the presence of headquarters, issuance of position papers, campaign appearances, fundraising activities. And then we look at other factors that provide substantive evidence of voter interest, and this can include serious media attention or results in polls.
And the board of directors looked at these criteria and determined that the two Green Party candidates, Howie Hawkins and Rachel Treichler, did meet these criteria, and therefore had to be invited to participate in any League-sponsored debates.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened?
BETSEY SWAN: Well, once the decision was made, we were in negotiations for one debate with WXXI in Rochester. This was a debate for the Attorney General's office --
AMY GOODMAN: And WXXI is owned by?
BETSEY SWAN: It’s a PBS station in Rochester. And then two debates out of New York City with WABC: one for the U.S. Senate and one for the state Attorney General's race. Basically we were negotiating, and the bottom line with XXI was, we were told, that if Rachel Treichler participated, Andrew Cuomo would not. And they were going with the debate with the two main party candidates.
At that point, because the League takes the position that once it has determined a candidate is a bona fide contestant, the candidate is required to be invited to debate for League sponsorship, we had no choice but to withdraw. A similar situation occurred in New York City. We don’t know the reason that the debates were limited to the two main candidates, but we were unable to negotiate inclusion of the Green Party candidates and also had to withdraw from those debates.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the League of Women Voters’s history when it comes to debates? How have you been involved? How did it all start?
BETSEY SWAN: Well, it’s a long history, and it precedes me by many years. I can talk in general terms about why the League organizes debates and how we organize them. The League’s a nonpartisan political organization. It was formed to encourage active and informed citizen participation in government. And one of our major focuses is voter services activity. To that end, we publish Voter’s Guide and we run candidate debates at all levels -- at the national level, the state level and local levels.
And we employ pretty much the same procedure at all levels. We adopt standards that we will use to judge whether candidates will be asked to debate, and once we have determined that a candidate is eligible, we require that the candidate be invited in order for the League to sponsor debates. We feel very strongly that the public has a right to know, to hear from viable candidates, and we also feel very strongly that the process should not be dictated by the political strategy of frontrunners, which is why we have adopted our position.
AMY GOODMAN: So, is the League of Women Voters just being increasingly sidelined, because you take this nonpartisan view and you insist on viable candidates being able to participate? You’re just getting taken out of all of these discussions.
BETSEY SWAN: I would say we are not getting taken out. We certainly have sponsored a number of debates this year, and at the local level we have ongoing and very frequent sponsorship of debates. I think it’s an ongoing dilemma and not one that is peculiar to the League. There are many organizations, some traditional news organizations, some organizations such as the League, that feel it’s very important that the public hear from a range of candidates. I think we all take slightly different tacks in how we approach this. I think the important thing is that the discussion continues and that we have as many debates as we can with as many viable candidates talking as we can.
AMY GOODMAN: Are we now having corporations taking over the decision-making about who will participate? For example, we had Jonathon Tasini on. Now, he was a Democratic candidate before the Democratic primary, challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton. And it was NY1, who’s parent is Time Warner, that said that he had to have something like a minimum 5% polling and $500,000 in the bank. He had over 13% polling, but he didn’t have that money in the bank. It wasn’t either/or, it was both. And it turned out that the parent company, Time Warner, had given Hillary Rodham Clinton something like $100,000. Ultimately, they didn’t hold the debate. Betsey Swan?
BETSEY SWAN: That happens. Those standards are very different from the League’s standards. We do look at polling. We have disjunctive requirements, so if the poll figures are not met, there are other ways a candidate can prove viability of candidacy.
AMY GOODMAN: But in this case, he was more than double the polling. The polling wasn’t the issue at all.
BETSEY SWAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: It was this prohibitive amount of money in the bank that I think was more than you needed as a presidential candidate. He was running for --
BETSEY SWAN: Yes, obviously those are standards that the League has not seen fit to adopt. We don’t feel they’re appropriate, to use that type of standard to exclude candidates.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Betsey Swan, I want to thank you very much for joining us, Legislative Analyst for the League of Women Voters, New York State. Thank you, speaking to us from Albany. Howie Hawkins, you’re the person that they pulled out their sponsorship over here in New York. Talk about your attempts -- I mean, what message it is you’re trying to get out, and how you do get it out when you’re not able to participate in the debate?
HOWIE HAWKINS: Well, the debate would have been great, because the two leading issues I’m running on are bringing the troops home from Iraq, and we know that a two-to-one majority of New Yorkers are for that position; and the other position is a national health insurance program that would cover everybody, and we know three-to-one New Yorkers favor that. So it wasn’t just my personal disappointment. It was the disservice to the majority of New Yorkers, who did not have a voice in these debates. Clinton and Spencer, the Democrat and Republican, debated how to fight the war in Iraq, not to get out of it, and how to patch up private health insurance. So the majority of New Yorkers were, in a sense, excluded from these debates.
My experience is, the leading candidates basically dictate the terms, and the broadcast media won’t broadcast debates without the leading personalities, and in this case Clinton is, you know, the best funded, probably best known candidate in the whole country. So, my sense is she dictated the terms.
I’ve personally experienced that when I’ve negotiated over mayor debates. I ran for mayor of Syracuse last year, and, you know, the Democrat came in and said we’re doing one debate with this one particular station, not three like he originally agreed to. And then, a Republican negotiator said, “Well, if the Democratic mayor doesn’t show up, we’re not showing up.” My position was, I’ll show up and debate anybody anytime. And I believe the producers sympathized with my position, but in the end they made a business decision. And so --
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, a business decision?
HOWIE HAWKINS: They said they won’t get an audience if the mayor isn’t involved, so the mayor was basically able to dictate the terms, a mayor who had, you know, a million dollars to run for mayor of Syracuse, a city now of about $125,000.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Howie Hawkins, Green candidate for U.S. Senate in New York. And when we come back from break, he’ll be joined by the Green Party candidate for Congress from Delaware. He lost his son in Iraq. His son was beheaded there. Our guest is Michael Berg. He’ll join us from Delaware. Stay with us.
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