Guest post by Neal Simon, 2018 independent candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. His new book, Contract to Unite America, features the issue of political debates as one of 10 key reforms to ensure the country lives up to its founding promise.
Debating is as American as apple pie. Before there was even an America, pilgrims were debating issues of the day in New England town halls. In the mid nineteenth century, the Lincoln-Douglas debates framed what was at stake in the coming Civil War and did nothing less than launch the Republican party. But our system for getting information to voters through debates has been flawed from the start. And, like much else affected by media aggregation and the Internet, it’s gotten worse in recent years.
In 2018, I participated in a televised debate among the three major candidates for U.S. Senate in Maryland. The feedback from viewers was overwhelmingly positive. They felt I came across as likable, trustworthy, and substantive. As a moderate independent candidate, I was viewed as pragmatic and focused on results for Maryland rather than for a party.
And we peaked in the polls—at 18 percent—in the three-way race, higher than any unaffiliated candidate in the country.
But that first debate would be my last. That’s because our reigning political duopoly controls far too much of the processes by which voters are exposed to new candidates and new ideas alike. And human nature being what it is, incumbents want to maximize their advantages, so they don’t want to give challengers any media attention or validation. That’s just human nature, and to be expected. The incumbent in my own race, Senator Ben Cardin, would never schedule another debate, though he’d agreed to do so.
Problem is, we lack the civic institutions that would make them accountable in an open marketplace of ideas. Incumbents freely refuse debates, set unrealistically high polling support to participate, and schedule debates when they think no one’s watching. In 2018, of 35 U.S. Senate races, 15 featured no debate or only one debate.
The League of Women Voters sponsored presidential debates until they quit, in 1988, saying the American duopoly’s unreasonable demands to favor their candidates were just the latest “campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions.” Since then, the two-party duopoly has only tightened its grip, taking over a Commission on Presidential Debates that claims to be “nonpartisan,” but in reality is bipartisan, consistently preventing third-party or independent candidates from being included in presidential debates.
One of the clearest ways it’s done so is by requiring new candidates to show up with a whopping 15% support in the polls. Since the CPD set up this hurdle, no independent or third-party candidate has qualified for a presidential debate. As a result, candidates not pre-approved by the system can’t get their winning message out gradually, as Jesse Ventura did in his race for governor, when strong debate performances took his independent candidacy from polling at 10 percent six weeks before the Minnesota governor’s election to over 20 percent after three debates, and ultimately 37 percent — and the governorship — after eight debates.
We need a proper debate commission to oversee debates for all federal elections, schedule them at times the public is likely to watch them, utilize debate formats that delve into actual issues, and solicit voter participation, including via social media, to determine the topics of greatest interest to the public. The commission should be non-partisan. For all federal races, I suggest a minimum of three debates. The polling threshold for the first debate would be 1 percent, 2 percent for the second debate, and 5 percent for the third one. The public would be informed when any candidate refused to attend a debate.
No more hiding. At this moment of depressing government dysfunction, the American public deserves to hear new ideas and new candidates.
Neal Simon is the author of Contract to Unite America: Ten Reforms to Reclaim Our Republic (RealClear Publishing), available for pre-order on Amazon now and available nationwide February 18.
