Free and Equal is hosting a presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado, at 7 p.m. mountain time, Tuesday, October 25. Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, Rocky De La Fuente of the Reform Party, and Gloria La Riva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation will debate each other face-to-face. Ed Asner is the moderator. They were invited because they are each on the ballot before at least 15% of the electorate. The other presidential candidates who met this standard declined to appear, because the rule was that they had to appear in person or not at all. They are Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Evan McMullin. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are barred from participating in a debate like this, because the Commission on Presidential Debates requires that candidates who participate in CPD debates not appear in any other debates.
The location is the Macky Auditorium.
That’s unfortunate. Did any of the three give specific reasons for declining (e.g., plans to be somewhere else specific)? I know Jill Stein gave her responses for the third CPD debate from a hospital bed with a bout of pneumonia; I believe she’s back on the campaign trail, but maybe she’s due for bed rest this week.
I heard that the Libertarian Party of Colorado is a co-sponsor of this event. It is pretty pathetic that the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, is not showing up.
For Johnson and Stein, such a debate would make sense if it was limited to the candidates who are on a enough ballots to be able to win an electoral majority. Participating with in a debate with arguably fringe candidates makes no sense. Doing so would cause the media to label them as fringe candidates. It would also divert them from their other campaign activities.
Will it be televised?
Unfortunately the world will not have the opportunity to see Donald Trump debate Gloria La Riva.
Andy… Show up for an event, that nobody’s going to watch, that will make zero difference for the candidates taking part, and is simply an all-around waste of money when there’s absolutely no distribution plan in place; why fucking bother? It’s no better than being covered by fucking worthless C-SPAN. The COLP is blowing otherwise good money… but the LP has been ridiculously good at that, so that’s not really a surprise. The Libertarian Party has been a worthless shit hole where money gets dumped down the toilet for over 40 years.
Michael… Maybe on “Free Speech TV” which basically nobody in America actually gets. The proper way to handle this would be to FIRST develop a news network that gets on to cable and satellite systems that includes third-parties in their coverage, build a viewer-base, and THEN start producing debates. That or you spend millions advertising an internet streamed debate on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Any other way is just blowing money on effectively nothing.
Maybe the COLP should take the money their wasting on this, and spend it on actually educating people as to what Libertarianism is, instead of letting 50 different definitions get pushed around all over the place so there’s never a consistent message put forth. Not going to happen though, cause that would be logical. Seems like the only people that get elected to LP party office are grossly incompetent.
Johnson/Weld do not even understand what libertarianism is.
Johnson should at least debate Stein. I could forgive him for not debating the others due to them not being on enough ballots to equal 270 electors, but Stein is on in 44 states plus DC, so she merits debating.
Johnson is too afraid to debate anyone.
Does Free and Equal have an interest in holding events similar to this one in other parts of the country? I live in upstate New York. If they did this in the northeast someplace I’d go to it.
Disgusting that Jill, Gary and McMuffin didn’t show. Gary didn’t show because he was probably scared for Castle stealing some of his support. Jill I guess doesn’t want to be seen without Gary?
LPCO contribution to this event was probably minimal, simply table rental, which I staffed and which was set up by our LPCO Outreach Director. Attendance was disappointing; I had not seen any event advertising in Boulder beyond a few newspaper articles introducing the event. I think previous United We Stand events by F&E in California have been very successful and am not sure why this particular event was not well-attended (I’m not on social media); election fatigue and irrelevance without Gary Johnson and Jill Stein? I had initiated bringing Johnson to the same campus four years ago to a SRO crowd (in a smaller hall).
My understanding was that Jill Stein and Evan McMullin had conditioned their participation on Gary Johnson’s, and he had not confirmed for whatever reason. Johnson’s campaign had offered a video to be shown, but that was declined. I came home to find McMullin featured on the first segment of ABC’s Nightline.
The last debate question was about problems the candidates had had, and all three spoke exclusively about ballot access problems including high costs to petition onto the ballot in most states. There was no mention of the voting system itself in this question and answers; Approval Voting USA had been a major “co-sponsor” of this event and Approval Voting supporters had made significant contributions toward the crowd-funding effort for this event, I was informed.
Free and Equal’s 3rd Annual Electoral Reform Symposium was announced at the end of the debate and is still scheduled to be held on Saturday, November 19, 9am-4pm MT at the Touchdown Club (at Folsom Stadium) at the University of Colorado at Boulder (note change of venue and city from past two years), although I cannot find any mention of it on F&E’s newly redone website.