League of Women Voters in Oregon refuse to let major parties set terms of gubenatorial debate

This article came from Third Party Watch.com from an online Oregon newspaper. Kudos to the League of Women Voters for not letting the majors push them around.

Sorry I haven't be blogging much lately because I've been busy. Hopefully after Labor day I'll get into a new routine.

- Sean Scallon



The League of Women Voters of the Rogue Valley has withdrawn its sponsorship of a planned gubernatorial debate because the two main candidates refused to allow challengers from minor parties to participate.

The League of Women Voters of Oregon recently opened its sponsored debates to any candidate who receives at least 5 percent support in an independent poll. Until last year, the league required a candidate to poll at least 10 percent to participate.

After seven months of planning, the league decided it wouldn’t co-sponsor the debate with KOBI Channel 5 because Gov. Ted Kulongoski, his Republican challenger Ron Saxton, and KOBI managers were all unwilling to open the debate to candidates who could show at least 5 percent support to participate, said Trish Bowcock, president of the League of Women Voters of the Rogue Valley.

“We were put in the position of saying we wouldn’t follow our own rules, and we couldn’t do that,” Bowcock said.

“They were given the format,” she said, “but they agreed to everything but the 5 percent rule.”

The decision means the debate will be closed to Mary Starrett, the Constitution party’s candidate for governor, as well as Libertarian candidate Richard Morley and Joseph Keating of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon.

Although the league has dropped its sponsorship, the debate is still scheduled for live broadcast on Channel 5 from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Oct. 24. The league estimated that the debate could reach as many as 380,000 registered voters in Southern Oregon.


Kulongoski and Saxton will field questions from members of the news media, including Bob Hunter, Mail Tribune editor.

Representatives from the Kulongoski and Saxton camps had their own explanations for why the league decided to withdraw.

Anna Richter Taylor, said the Kulongoski campaign’s only condition concerned when the polling had to be completed to determine which candidates would be involved in the forum.

“We wanted to know when they were going to make the decision,” she said.

Richter Taylor said the governor’s campaign welcomed the league’s sponsorship.

“We never put conditions around their involvement,” she added.

Angela Wilhelms, spokesperson for the Saxton campaign, said she wasn’t aware of any concern about minor-party candidates.

“We were given a format and asked to participate and we agreed,” she said. “We haven’t had any follow-up conversations with anybody about this.”

Bob Wise, vice president and general manager of KOBI, said, “I would have loved to have worked with the League of Women Voters.”

Wise said that after discussing the 5 percent issue with the Kulongoski and Saxton campaigns “It became apparent that that was an issue.”

He said the Kulongoski and Saxton campaigns wanted to set the limit at 10 percent support for a minor candidate, which Wise described as “reasonable.”

“It didn’t seem like an unrealistic expectation of the candidates participating,” said Wise. He said it was important to continue to hold the forum in the interests of his viewers even though the league has dropped its sponsorship.

Margaret Noel, chairwoman of the League of Women Voters of Oregon education fund, said it is very difficult for any minor party candidate to get 5 percent support. She said she had not seen any polls so far that showed any of the minor candidates with 5 percent.

Noel said the filing deadline for gubernatorial candidates is next Tuesday, so it would have been premature to say that no other contenders should be in the debate.

She said the league also wants to extend the deadline for minor candidates to show 5 percent support right up until the time of the debate.

“If a candidate had got the 5 percent, they would deserve to be in the debate,” she said.