Tonight I got to experience my first public debate at the League of Women Voter's (LWV)candidate forum. The LWV sponsor this to help educate local voters. They are knowledgeable, professional, and first class all of the way. They are to be commended for the good work they do on behalf of the city. We were in room 201 of Northrup School, and I've got to tell you, we packed the house. To be honest, many of the attendees were current county and city office holders, and I think that they were there to not just hear us out, but to also get a preview of the questions that would be asked during their own debate sometime after our 4th Ward debate.
The LWV said that the session was taped and will be played on the local public cable sometime between now and the primary on September 9th.
We all got to answer questions from the LWV, the Post-Bulletin (Jeff Pieters was there), and written questions from the audience. Our responses could be no more than one minute in length. *Whew*, a one minute response is tough. "How would you have handled the recent Washington Village controversy?" One Minute. GO! 30 seconds 15 seconds STOP !
I'll try to use this web-site to better answer the questions, and get them answered before the primary. The people that I talked to afterward said that I clearly won the debate over Pat and Mark. Good, I tried really hard. Try to watch it on TV (it'll be about 45 minutes) and see if you agree.
Jeff Pieters said that 4th Ward Day in the P-B is scheduled for Tuesday Sept 7th. Hopefully, there will be more room to stretch out and put the answers into some form of context. I felt like in one minute all you could really say were things like "Yes, I'm against violence in our neighborhoods". "Yes, safety is important to me". "Yes, I believe that everyone will be better off if we all work together". We should be able to add more meat to the debate through this web-site, viewing the debate on TV, additional upcoming debates, and other media coverage.
I was very impressed with the League of Women Voters, and the turnout by concerned citizens. I will practise and learn how to better answer a question in a short period of time.

Labels: Public Forums