close
close

topicnews · August 29, 2024

Slotkin undermines debate commission efforts

Slotkin undermines debate commission efforts

By refusing to participate in three debates organized this fall by the new Michigan Debate Task Force, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) is undermining the administration’s good efforts to make candidate confrontations a natural part of running for office in this state.

The Senate race in Michigan is hotly contested, and Senate elections are among the most important in each election cycle. The successor to outgoing Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Lansing, who is retiring, is a major decision.

Slotkin said she looked forward to debating her Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, during her victory speech on primary night earlier this month. Rogers has also agreed to debate her during the general election campaign.

But now Slotkin has decided to bypass the task force debates and is instead accepting invitations from WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids and WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) in Detroit to the October debates.

Both they and the television networks should be reprimanded for undermining the debate commission’s initial efforts to standardize debates in Michigan.

The idea behind the task force’s initiative is to remove tactics from debates. It has chosen the dates and locations for the three events it is sponsoring and will also select the moderators and set the rules. The hope is that this will provide voters with the fairest and most inclusive debates possible and eliminate the excuses that candidates all too often find to avoid confronting their opponents.

Voters have a right to all possible information about the candidates before making a decision at the ballot box.

An October 2022 report from the Brooking Institution found a decline in the frequency of Senate debates in contested elections nationally. As recently as the early 2010s, the most contested Senate races routinely featured 10 to 17 debates per election year. Now that number has dropped to about seven per cycle.

Senator Gary Peters (Democrats, Bloomfield Hills) and now Representative John James (Republicans, Shelby Twp.) did not participate in a debate before their elections in 2020. And Slotkin did not debate her Democratic opponent, Hill Harper, on her way to victory in the primary earlier this month.

“Their declining frequency represents the loss of a valuable democratic institution that promotes principled political engagement and dialogue in a political situation where ideas are challenged,” the Brookings report says.

Transferring control of the process to a more neutral body such as the Debates Commission should ensure a more informative and authentic dialogue.

Michigan’s new debate task force is comprised of stakeholders from business, public universities and media – including The Detroit News. It is working with the Michigan Association of Broadcasters to distribute debate feeds statewide and make them available to any interested news outlet.

“We want to take control of that away from the candidates and really focus on the common good, on providing information in a way that is unfiltered and unadulterated,” said Dave Dulio, director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University.

The task force has set up a website where Michigan residents can submit questions or topics they want discussed during the debates.

Slotkin’s refusal to participate is a serious setback.

It was hoped that this year’s Senate debates would be a dry run for 2026, when all state offices will be up for election.

You may also like...