Saturday, June 18, 2011

San Diego Mayoral Candidate Forum

I find it intriguing the two lines of banter about the San Diego Mayor's race with some of the below candidates that have filed an intent to run statement:
There is the one angle of talk about the actual campaign; who are the front runners, certain candidate ceiling and base of support, intensity of a campaigner, fundraising capacity, candidates with competing support, partisanship, flame out potential (dropping out of race), and then the potential match-up in a run-off.

There is the other conversation on the various candidates and their management as a mayor; a strong mayor, characteristics related to previous mayors, a coalition maker, partisanship, understand the complexity of the issues, relationship to council members, downtown establishment and labor.

I think we have an opportunity this far out before the Primary Election to allow the voters of the City of San Diego the opportunity to meet these real half dozen candidates, hear why they are running, what they intend to do in office and ask people for their vote through a type of multi-district townhall debate program.

First, there are currently 13 people that have filed intent to run, but only four that have opened a candidate account. While it would be grand to have every candidate that files speak at the forum it should be for the legitimate candidates. There should be a criteria for those who are invited and if they wish to attend each one can meet what I would outline as the required criteria:
  1. They need to open a candidate committee;
  2. They need to hire at least one staff member to run their campaign on a full-time basis;
  3. They need to hire a treasurer to manage their candidate committee; and
  4. They need to actually commit to run a real campaign (i.e. send out mailers, host phone banks, host fundraisers or self-fund a reasonable sum, etc...)
While many love the fringe candidates that run every cycle, and say everyone should be invited to the debates this is a real issue for the voters of the City of San Diego who need someone that will make this a real full-time job. You can't have a substance debate for the voters with 13 plus people answering questions. Sorry Crane.

Here is how I would outline the forums:
  1. There should be two forums hosted in each of the current eight city council districts with one in each district each following week starting the first of the year, then a second in each district after the completion of the first cycle of debates are completed.
  2. The forums should be no longer then two hours or some voters will leave, some will not be able to absorb the entire debate and it is hard for the working person to dedicate more then two hours to anything political, unless they are political wonks.
  3. Each candidate should get a two minute opening and a two minute closing.
  4. The debates should allow for real-time translation at minimum for Spanish and possibly a second or third language.
  5. The forums should be funded by the lcoal Republican and Democratic parties, who would just solicit donations from their respective donors anyway. We don't have to have taxpayers cover the cost of these forums.
  6. There should be a three person panel to ask questions, which should be someone selected by the Republican Party chair, someone selected from the Democratic Party chair and a third which both party chairs can hopefully deem as neutral. Panels are always charged with being partisan, so lets skip the theatrics of choosing only reporters, academia, or non-profits and allow there to be some meaty questions.
  7. The forums should hold candidates to 1-minute responses.
  8. Candidates should each be allowed a certain number of times they can ask one specific candidate a follow-up question.
  9. The audience should be polled at the end of each question on whether they think the candidates answered the question and not whether they liked the candidates answers.
  10. At the end of the forum there is a spin zone for reporters from print, on-line and social media representatives to ask questions of either the candidates, their campaign representatives, party designee, and allow the fringe candidates to have a representative to complain how they were not allowed to debate.
I have other ideas, but I think you can get my line of thought here. So, I call on the following organizations that have the ability to put together these types of forums, to step-up and help organize these forums:

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