Guest op-ed: Pereira - "Are local debates useful?"
This guest op-ed was submitted by Lisa Pereira, a Blogland reader who lives in Goose Creek. A former journalist and paramedic who ran for State House Seat 102, she is currently active in Lowcountry GOP circles. You can air your views by emailing your op-ed to earl@earlcapps.org.
Election season is winding down and candidates are wrapping up their campaigns and taking stock of what they have done and where they stand. This offers us a chance to reflect upon candidate debates and their role in the process of winning elections.
Election season is winding down and candidates are wrapping up their campaigns and taking stock of what they have done and where they stand. This offers us a chance to reflect upon candidate debates and their role in the process of winning elections.
Debates have always been tricky things. One person
entering the debate always has more to lose than the other person. Between the debates, meet and greets, fundraisers, and voter phone calls candidates have to make hard choices of the best use of their limited time. I question the value of debates both in terms of getting out the candidates message or in swaying undecided voters in local campaigns and have to wonder if perhaps the time to stop attending debates
has come.
Too often debates either have too many candidates to
thoughtfully delve into the issues (this year’s 14 candidate school board debates in Charleston County), have little turnout by truly undecided voters or they are carefully chosen venues put on by supposedlyneutral parties (The League of Women Voters) that turn out not to be. In some instances are little more than a vehicle for fringe candidates (yes, even within the Republican party) to call out other candidates like some sort of school yard bully fight.
Take a debate between GOP State Representative Peter McCoy and Carol Tempel for a
House seat in Charleston County. McCoy had more to lose from attending that debate than his opponent did. Fortunately, Tempel all but skewered, roasted, and served herself up on a platter
for him.
A recent debate between Charleston-area
State Senate candidates Paul Thurmond and Paul Tinkler serves as another example. The debate
was sponsored by the Old Charles Towne District Task Force and on the surface a nonpartisan affair.
It wasn’t and was not attended by any potential swayable voters that I could
see. Mostly it was a numbers game, put on for the benefit of the media, to see
how many supporters each side could bring out to the debate.
Disclosure moment: I happen to really like Paul Thurmond.
He is a genuinely honest and sincere guy. I don’t say that about a lot of
politicians either Republican or Democrat. I can’t say the same thing about Tinkler.
I find him to be a bit smarmy and also insulting of the average voter’s
intelligence. No one for a minute believes that Tinkler was not in the loop,
involved in, or at a minimum kept informed of the Thurmond lawsuit. To stand
there and say that at multiple venues flies in the face of common sense. There
is only one place where information is more leaky than in politics and that is
in the fire service.
I did admire Tinkler’s ability to talk (mostly
unchallenged by the moderator), for sometimes far more than his allotted time
about anything other than the question. I would have been interested to hear
more about how ethics reform creates jobs in South Carolina. I’m sure it would
have been far more interesting than Thurmond’s boring on topic ideas for
creating jobs by lowering taxes and maintaining a right to work state status
for South Carolina. That didn’t stop Tinkler from insinuating that Thurmond was
the only candidate to “magically survive a ballot challenge” – even if that
wasn’t true. Just ask Sean Bennet, who was sued by Senator Mike Rose after Rose
lost his re-election primary.
While both candidates shared interesting information – I
was once again left this debate, as I have others like this, wondering if the candidates’ attendance
at the debate persuaded a voter or were people just gathered around to watch a
school yard fight to which both candidates felt obligated to attend lest they
be called out for being a coward?
While debates were once a noble part of the American
political tradition, it seems that – at least at the local level – they’re not providing information that can
help inform, motivate and sway voters. In an era when we trust government less and feel like reforms are
needed more than ever, these forums don’t seem to be helping very much. This begs the question: In
an era of unprecedented targeting of small blocs of voters with specific
messages, should a candidate attend these functions and is it a waste of time?
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