The League of Women Voters and PBS had to call off both gubernatorial and Senate televised debates today because Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist and Rick Scott all declined to participate.
The sponsors said they’d lined up Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff of PBS’s The NewsHour to moderate the debates Thursday in Orlando.
They couldn’t, though, get commitments from either Republican, Senate candidate Marco Rubio and gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, nor from Gov. Charlie Crist, who left the GOP to run for the Senate as an independent.
The two Democrats, Senate candidate Kendrick Meek and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, accepted, but the League and public TV system don’t allow empty chair debates.
Ducking debates seems to be going around this year, particularly among Republicans and “Tea Bagger” candidates. Alan Grayson recently was the only participant in his debate when his opponent Daniel “Taliban Dan” Webster was a no show.
How can one expect a candidate to be any kind of leader when they’re afraid to debate or answer a few questions from the media?
What are they afraid of? That voters will see for themselves that they don’t know what they’re doing or that they are woefully unqualified?
If you can’t show up, you certainly don’t deserve our votes.
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