March 2 Gubernatorial Forum Format

Right On Huntsville and the Madison County Young Republicans are hosting an Alabama Republican Gubernatorial Forum in Huntsville on March 2, 2010.  The forum will be held at the Davidson Center (ASRC) and all of the candidates have committed to attend.  This will be the largest debate in the State and will be a great event for Huntsville.

The rough plan is to host a reception with the candidates before the debate, then debate for two hours, then maybe spend some time with the candidates after the debate.  We’ll have a moderator and a few panelists who will ask questions in their areas of interest.  Two hours sounds like a lot of time, but with so many candidates time will be short.

I volunteered to help with the debate format and to help generate the questions (Free the Hops?).

The Commission on Presidential Debates developed the ‘Guide to Hosting Your Own Debate’, which provides good information, a checklist, and a suggested format.  Check it out (this is a summary – lots of detail at the link):

This guide uses the following checklist to help you prepare for your debate…

• Budget
• Debate Hall
• Furniture/Stage
• Electrical
• Printed Materials
• Labor
• Security
• Videos/Transcripts
• Internet
• Debate Site
• Candidate Negotiation
• Format
• Audience
• Noise
• Community Interest
• Cameras
• Safety
• Media
• Post-Debate Activities

Candidate Negotiation
The debate sponsor and the participants must agree on the details and terms of the debate… In handling negotiations, you need to be a firm and fair facilitator. Candidates will be particularly interested in the format issues which follow.

• Selection of questioners
• Debate topics
• Debate length
• Opening and closing statements
• Questions and answers
• Timing the debate and selecting a timer
• Order of speakers

Opening and Closing Statements
Will the candidates have opening and closing statements? Prepared statements reduce the amount of time for questions, so consider limiting them to two or three minutes. The presidential debates have included two-minute closing statements.

Questions and Answers
Consider setting time limits for both questions and answers. Questions in the 1996 presidential debates were limited to 20 seconds in length. Citizen questioners in the 1992 and 1996 town hall debates were asked to keep their questions short and limited to one topic. Candidates in the presidential debates were given two minutes for answers and one minute for rebuttals.

We’ve already worked out some of the details, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do.  One of the more important tasks now is to contact SPONSORS for the event (a great deal at $400).  We expect 1,400 (Davidson Center capacity) politically active people to attend the debate – sponsors get advertised at the event.  Note that there are a limited number of sponsorships available.