Why Won’t You Debate, Gov. Warner?

The News & Advance
Published: August 28, 2008

You would think every candidate for public office, especially one as important as a seat in the United States Senate, would want voters to have every available opportunity to become aware of and educated about the campaign.

Well, if you’re Democrat Mark Warner and you’re sitting on a pile of money and a double-digit lead over your Republican opponent, evidently not.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Virginia e-mailed a news release to the state’s media announcing that they wouldn’t be holding a statewide, televised debate in the race between Warner and Republican Jim Gilmore. The reason? Warner refused to participate.

The voters league was founded almost a century ago and has a history of voter education and awareness campaigns. In the fall of 2006, the Virginia chapter organized and sponsored a debate between Republican Sen. George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb that was carried by television stations in all the state’s major markets.

League officials were working with two stations in the Richmond area — WTVR, a CBS affiliate, and WCVE, a PBS station — to host and produce the Warner/Gilmore debate. Stations across the state would have had access to the feed for a live broadcast to their viewers.

But that’s not going to be.

Gilmore, running low on money and going nowhere in the polls, signed on early with the League when invitations went out in June, not waiting until the Aug. 25 notification deadline. While television and national Web sites have been plastered with “Warner for Senate” ads, Gilmore’s been reduced to producing clips for YouTube and then sending out e-mails announcing the posting of the ads.

After weeks of one delay and one excuse after another, the Warner camp finally said no.

The two have met for only one face-to-face debate back in mid-July at the annual meeting of the Virginia Bar Association at the pricey Homestead resort in Bath County.

Though widely covered by the media, the debate wasn’t open to the general public and wasn’t televised live.

Warner and his supporters can rationalize the decision not to debate all they want: scheduling difficulities, conflicts with already booked events, problems with the organizers and so forth. It’s all a bunch of baloney.

The sole reason they’re not taking part in any debate is this: They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Their guy’s sitting on a 2-1 advantage in the polls with millions of dollars in the bank and only 67 days until the election. They’re simply hoping to coast until victory on Nov. 4.

With desperation beginning to set in, it would definitely be in Republican Gilmore’s best interest to participate. Heck, he’d probably agree to a debate a day for the chance to bloody Warner’s nose and get some free publicity.

That would be the political cost to Warner to participate, but so what.

The fact is a debate, televised live across the commonwealth, would serve the interests of the voters.

That should be paramount to any candidate, even one way ahead in the polls.