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Open up the debates!
BY SETH GITELL

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2002 -- Each year voter turn-out goes down and the political scientists ask why. Tonight’s gubernatorial debate between Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Shannon O’Brien will provide one of the answers: not enough choices. Middlesex Superior Court Judge Linda Giles helped guarantee that voters will only learn about two of their electoral choices. Giles ruled only hours ago against granting plaintiffs Barbara Johnson, the independent candidate, and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, a preliminary injunction that would have either blocked tonight’s debate or forced the private media consortium sponsoring it to open it up to other candidates. Stein and Johnson argued that by deciding to include the Republican and Democratic candidates -- at the expense of the other candidates -- constituted an in-kind political contribution to two of the candidates and violated state campaign finance laws. (Carla Howell, the Libertarian candidate, brought suit in Worcester Superior Court; a Libertarian, she based her argument on breach-of-contract, not campaign finance laws to which she objects.)

I can’t speak about Johnson -- other than noting that she will be on the ballot on November 5. But, as Dan Kennedy points out, Stein and Howell have already jumped through numerous hoops to get on the ballot. Both the Green Party, by dint of Ralph Nader’s six percent showing in Massachusetts in the 2000 presidential election, and Howell’s 12 percent showing against Senator Ted Kennedy that same year, are considered " major parties " under state law. Both candidates collected more than 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot and both are polling around four percent in the governor’s race.

The technical argument made by Johnson and Stein might not have been the strongest; they argue that debates constitute a " political expenditure " on the part of the media outfits that hold them -- a view I am unwilling to endorse. But the substance of their case is sound: they are candidates who have as much reason to be at the debates as Romney and O’Brien and they ought to participate in the electoral discussion. Everyone knows, for instance, that Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura would have never been elected in Minnesota had he not been allowed into that state’s gubernatorial debates. The self-styled media consortium -- WBZ, WCVB, WGBH, WHDH, New England Cable News, and The Boston Globe -- has an enormous amount of power in this election with no check on their ability to influence the race.

It’s true, as advocates of the consortium’s decision point out, that large debates can be unwieldy. In the race for the 9th Congressional District last year, large chunks of debate time were eaten up by strictly-fringe candidates, such as LaRouchite William Ferguson. The same was true in the Republican presidential primary debates between George Bush, John McCain and Alan Keyes (then bound for a defunct career as a cable tv-host). Harvard Professor Thomas Patterson, the author of The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty (Knopf), points out that respondents to his 2000 survey frequently questioned Keyes’ inclusion in the debates as distracting from the central issues distinguishing Bush and McCain.

But none of that means the consortium is correct. According to Giles’s opinion, which quoted Peter Brown, the news director of WBZ, the decision was based on " the judgment of the majority of the Sponsors that the debate should be limited to the leading candidates for Governor. " The news outlets, in other words, used an editorial judgment in making up their minds. (Globe editor Marty Baron pushed for their inclusion but was overruled by the other outlets.)

But here the disparity between the state law, which finds no legal difference between the Democratic Party and the Green Party, and the consortium’s decision is jarring. The contrast between the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party is even more disconcerting. The Republicans, after all, constitute only 13 percent of registered voters in the state. Howell received 12 percent of the vote the last time she ran. Why are the Republicans any more legitimate than the Libertarians?

Patterson suggests that the state form a debate commission modeled after the presidential commission. " We like to have clear standards that get applied fairly, " says Patterson. " The standards should be set before the campaign begins -- before you even know who’s in it. "

Right now, the Greens are back to the drawing board. " It’s another set-back for democracy when big media corporations get to determine who’s voice is heard and whose isn’t and then invoke freedom of speech to justify silencing certain candidates, " says Patrick Keaney, Stein’s campaign manager. " I think we’ve entered an Orwellian phase in the life of our democracy. "

Stein’s case would have been helped if the Greens had qualified for Clean Elections. But it’s possible that the consortium would have rejected their participation in the debate even then.

During tonight’s debate, both sides may level accusations of patronage and corporate excesses against the other. The average voter may find it hard to distinguish which campaign enjoys greater support from lobbyists and the establishment -- Romney, who is the beneficiary of a fundraising visit from Bush on Friday, or O’Brien, whose links to the State House are well-known. It would have been interesting to see both the Greens and the Libertarians press both candidates on this. But we won’t get that chance. Neither the local news media nor Judge Giles will permit it.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: October 1, 2002
"Today's Jolt" archives: 2002  2001

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