Tuesday evening I attended the US Senate debate between US Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) and US Representative Cory Gardner (R-Koch). My organizer from Mark Udall's campaign had offered me a ticket to attend, but there were a series of misunderstandings that led to a less than happy attendance. That, however is not the reason for not attending in the future. For that, you can follow me over the fold (tease).
The debate took place at the Denver Post building in downtown Denver, across from Civic Center Park and next to both the State Capitol and the City Hall. I arrived at 6, which is what time my organizer told me the rally would start at. As you can see from the picture of the Udall supporters, it was barely attended at 6PM. I thought, okay, maybe it will be a little while before others arrive and it gets going. I had been told the debate was at 7PM.
So I went and grabbed a sandwich at Quiznos, a Colorado company I've been patronizing since it was just a couple of stores in Fort Collins nearly 20 years ago. Ok, it was started in Denver in the 80's, but I only knew it in Fort Collins while going to school there, so I've always treated it as a local company as compared to the national chain it has grown into. I wandered back over to the Post building and munched the sandwich wondering why no crowd was growing. After finishing, I decided to head inside and wait - maybe see what Gardner's folk were up to.
There was a debate playing on a TV in the hall and some yard signs for Gardner, but people were sparse and they didn't look excited to see a debate. I saw a couple people hand a woman at a desk a printed email and she scanned it and sent them up a ramp where they went into a door. I went to the desk and said that I hadn't received an email but that I had been told a ticket would be left for me. She said she had a couple extra and scanned another printout. I asked her if the debate was the one from yesterday in front of the Chamber of Commerce and she said that it was what was going on right now. The debate had started at six, not seven, and I had wasted half an hour wandering around, having dinner and waiting for the debate to start. I hurried on up and was able to find a place to sit.
There were the two very telegenic candidates, answering (or more likely, not answering) the questions being put to them by the two moderators. Sorry for the blurry picture. I've pretty much given up on my cellphone camera.
I quickly found out a truth about candidate debates and why I will never come to one in person again. Out of decorum, I couldn't yell at the participants the way I can at home in front of my TV screen. I guess I could go to a watch party and do it. In person, however, I didn't think I'd be allowed to stay if I yelled "Answer the question" at Gardner during one of his many non-answers. For the first of a series of "Yes/No" questions when Gardner decided to try and give a complex answer rather than just submit a yes or a no. I, along with several other people in the audience call out to him to answer it yes/no as the moderator asked. The moderator's only penalty, instead of giving him a minute at the end of the series of questions, he gave him only thirty seconds instead, while giving Mark Udall the full sixty seconds.
It was tough to watch. Often, the two candidates would barely answer the question for 5-10 seconds before going to their prepared remarks. Sometimes, they didn't even give that much time to the original question. I'm partisan, I'll admit it, but I really hated the smirk on Gardners mug and I didn't mind Udall answering to the room rather than looking at Gardner even when addressing him directly. I think he was focusing on a camera, but I didn't see one.
A few other random thoughts -
- Representative Gardner said at one point that he looked forward to working with Senator Udall on some issue - I can't recall which one. I asked the person next to me if Gardner realized that if he wins, Mark Udall won't be there to work with him and if he loses, he'll be the one out of Congress. The opportunity for the two of them to work together is long dead, killed mostly by Boehner's refusal to bring many issues to a debate, let alone a vote.
- I think the moderator brought up the term Mark Uterus instead of Mark Udall while asking Senator Udall to respond to criticism that he was narrowly focused on women's health issues and Gardner's record on abortions and personhood. Udall's response was that his campaign's commercials have been a majority on other issues but that women's health issues were an important component of Gardner's record that he was trying to run away from (and Gardner ducked and dodged that issue all debate).
- Both accused the other of cutting Medicare by 800 million dollars. I felt Udall had a stronger argument, saying Gardner voted to cut it and use the money for tax cuts for the wealthy. Udall explained his vote as one where he was voting to use the cuts to prolong Medicare for six years, putting the money into incentives to have companies pare costs and not just giving it away.
- During the one word yes/no questions, one was whether the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, should be amended or repealed. Udall answered first and he said "No", which surprised me and apparently many in the audience. Tabor has some means for temporary authorizations for raising money, but it nearly sank the state budget as the state tried getting out of the Great Recession. TABOR was designed to only reduce spending, never letting it grow unless extreme measures were taken to get around it. Colorado voters, to their credit, took those extreme measures to allow the state to re-grow expenditures as the state started recovering and needed to fix all the cuts that had been made to meet balanced budget requirements. I have mistrusted TABOR ever since it was passed and was proven right as to the potential problems from it. Mark Udall says it doesn't need to be amended or ended and while that's a state issue rather than a federal one, I think his answer was one of a candidate who didn't dare be pegged as someone willing to raise taxes this close to the election.
- It seemed like the majority in the audience were pro-Udall, though the Denver Post's comments to the debate were made by a couple of Republican fans/staffers. I have never tried posting videos here, but the Denver Post's link with a video of the debate (an hour long) is at http://www.denverpost.com/.
In the end, I wound up seeing only half the debate. I got the experience of having gone and now I'll know not to try it again. Too much stress building up and not being able to let it out. So I came home and wrote this diary instead.
Tue Oct 07, 2014 at 11:03 PM PT: Dang it! Cory Gardner is the Representative from Koch Industries. Don't know how that got dropped from the first sentence. It was there! Honest!