Bottom line: Voters deserve debates
It’s that time of year again.
As an election bears down on us (early voting starts in less than a month for the Nov. 4 election), the pre-election sparring over candidate debates is in full bray.
It’s as predictable as the seasons: Candidates trying to make headway try to corner their opponents into meeting them face to face.
Dueling campaigns issue charges and counter-charges and one side accuses the other of ducking debates.
There’s a foundational political truth about the debate dance:
Candidates trying to make up ground or raise their name recognition desperately need debates; conversely, frontrunners have little to gain and potentially a lot to lose by debating. That’s why the former frequently assail their opponents for dodging them while the latter seem to have a lot of scheduling conflicts.
This debate duet has been playing itself out in the Daines-Curtis U.S. Senate race and the Lewis-Zinke U.S. House race as well as more recently in the Flathead County commissioner race between Phil Mitchell and Stacey Schnebel.
Mitchell, a Republican, declined an invitation to debate Schnebel, a Democrat, by saying in effect that he didn’t need to.
It’s true that Mitchell has that all-important “R” after his name that is a near-guarantee of election in Flathead County. (The words of Joe Brenneman, the last Democrat to serve as commissioner, say it all: “I realize that in the last election Daffy Duck, running as a Republican, likely would have beaten me,” Brenneman said after being soundly defeated for re-election).
But that doesn’t mean voters don’t deserve a debate between those who aspire to serve us as commissioners.
As one letter writer put it, “What are his views on the green box sites, funding for county schools, roads, fire departments, county sheriff and the different demands for different parts of the county, i.e. Whitefish and West Glacier. Although not all these areas would be brought up in a debate, it would be nice for people to hear his views on some.”
We agree with those sentiments. That’s why we offered to sponsor the debate between Mitchell and Schnebel that will now apparently never take place.
Forget the political posturing about what is important to candidates. The fact is that debates do have great value to voters.
Seeing or listening to candidates — without the interference of spin doctors, publicists or political handlers or the artificial hagiography of TV ad campaigns — can be incredibly informative for citizens.
There are few better ways to gauge rivals for an elected position than to see them engage each other, exchange views and truly debate the issues.
Debates matter to us and to other voters. We hope candidates take heed.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.