Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Debate Debacle

More later, but I just got out of a meeting with WGBH, WBUR, and the Boston Globe along with the other campaigns.

The media had been offering one pre-primary debate and one post primary debate and we thought all sides had agreed to that and we were just going to hash out details.

However, Ed Jesser (sp?) and Ed Fouhy (sp?) who were there on behalf of the Mayor refused to commit to a debate date after the primary. They were generally against committing to anything, answering most questions about when they would commit to something with "soon" without any deadline.

Yoon, Flaherty and I have been trying to get a meeting with Fouhy for weeks which he has been putting off, I got him pinned down to 'before July 1st' at this point. It was the best I could do.

Brian McGrory who was extremely diplomatic but clearly unhappy because they thought they had a deal done at one point said to Menino's people "You're being too cute by half".

The media sources had clearly laid out to the candidates that they wanted to have two debates and that the candidates needed to agree to both debates or there would be neither.

So, since Menino balked the Media sources rescinded their offer and we have no debates scheduled.

I'm hoping the people and the press call his bluff and schedule a debate for September 15th and see if he decides not to show.

2 comments:

Adam Gaffin said...

Is there still a third debate schedule? At WGBH?

Anonymous said...

So it's come to this! The three challengers have to get together and either stage debates, or get others to stage them, without the mayor. Let's have a design contest to make a big chicken suit with Menino's face, to put on his empty chair. He can't be the gatekeeper for our democracy any more.