`Debate dodgers' continue to run away from League of Women Voters

Yankees dramatic victory brings back memories of another home run

Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE

They are called "debate dodgers" by the Saratoga County League of Women Voters.

And their numbers are growing.

Instead of embracing dialog with their opponents, they are running away from it.

It is increasingly becoming almost impossible to get two candidate in the same room together and that has left the League of Women Voters frustrated.

You've already heard about Rep. Elise Stefanik refusal to not only debate her opponent Paula Collins, but even to announce publicly a town hall meeting where constituents can ask her questions.

This appears to be the latest gameplan for Republican candidates.

Besides Stefanik, Republican candidate Jeremy Messina (he's running against incumbent Carrier Woerner in the 113th Assembly District) has ignored the League of Women's Voters invitation, Saratoga County's Republican treasurer candidate Joanne Kupferman declined to participate in a forum with Democrat Michele Madigan and long-time Republican state Senator Jim Tedisco only agreed to a debate Democrat Minita Sanghvi after early voting begins on Oct. 26.

This is used to be meat and potatoes democracy.

As far as I'm concerned, there should be a Constitutional mandate that every candidate running for elected office - whether for president or dog catcher - be required to debate their opponents.

  “It takes away the opportunity from voters to be able to better understand the positions of both candidates and so they can make an informed decision when they go to the polls,” League Co-President Linda McKenney told Wendy Liberatore of the Times Union. “It is hard and frustrating for our team when we have to make multiple attempts to set one of these events and we don’t hear back.”

It's mind boggling to think there are political candidates running for public office who simply do not want to engage with voters. And to not even respond to an esteemed organization like the League of Women Voters, well, it is just rude.

The group embarks on its mission late in the summer to ensure forums are in place before early voting starts. The group did manage to set up a forum for the 112th Assembly Race between Republican incumbent Mary Beth Walsh and Democratic opponent Joe Seeman for Oct. 23 and eventually accepted Tedisco's offer of Oct. 30 to debate Sanghvi.

“We try to have them all happen before early voting starts,” McKenney said to Liberatore. “That’s our goal. That’s what we propose. But then there are some candidates who put out a different date, or a later date and we won’t deny that because we want to have the forums.”

Twenty-five years ago when Mark Mahoney and I both worked at The Post-Star we got involved in arranging debates because the League of Women Voters in Warren County had ceased to be active. We can attest to the difficulty of setting up the debate and getting candidates to participate.

We remember Rep. John Sweeney canceling at the last minute over some perceived slight.

And another time when Roy McDonald was running for the Assembly, a man stood up in Fort Edward and started singing "Old McDonald had a farm." I'm still not sure what the point of that was.

Granted, the forums can sometimes turn into a fiasco - even a bit of a free-for-all with enthusiastic supporters rooting lustily for their candidates, but a good moderator enforcing strict rules can keep things focused.

While Assemblywoman Woerner called the League's forums "the gold standard," her opponent Messina told Liberatore that the debates were slanted to favor Democrats.

I've been to a lot of these events over the years, and while none are perfect, I've always believed the intent was to be fair to both sides. Since Republicans win most of these local seats, it's hard to know what he might be talking about.

Instead, Messina organized his own town hall meeting and invited Woerner to participate with rules he created. Woerner passed and Messina appeared alone which is nothing more than a campaign rally.

McKenney said League of Women's Voters prides itself on being nonpartisan.

I believe most think that as well.

“The League of Women Voters encourages informed and active participation in government,” McKenney told Liberatore. “The league’s candidate events provide a fair and impartial way for voters to hear from all the candidates in their district. … When a candidate will not participate, the community loses an opportunity to gain nonpartisan information to inform their vote.”

Voters should take that information with them inside the voting booth. Any candidate who refuses to debate or participate in a town hall forum like what the League of Women's Voters provides is failing in its responsibility to the voters and should disqualified from consideration.

---

Great memories

Juan Soto's three-run homer in the top of the 10th to send the Yankees to the World Series Saturday night wasn't quite the same drama as Chris Chambliss' bottom of the ninth home run in 1976, but it was pretty close.

It's hard to believe it has been 15 years since the Yankees have been to the World Series.

In 2009, I splurged and spent a lot of money to go to Game 2 in the new Yankee Stadium with my brother and 14-year-old son Joseph.

I justified the expenditure by saying, "Who knows when the Yankees will get into the World Series again."

---

My logic was sound

In 1976, I was a freshman in college too distracted to study for midterms until I knew the fate of the Yankees in the deciding Game 5 against the Kansas City Royals. After Chambliss hit the first pitch off Mark Littell - you remember everything about a moment like that - my father and I jumped into each other's arms in the middle of the living room and my dad poured his can of Budweiser over my head in celebration.

It's been nearly 50 years since that moment. On Saturday, I was watching the game with my own son, but no beer was spilled this time around.

---

Read Aaron Woolf’s first “Dispatch” in The Front Page on Tuesday.

Dispatch from Woolf

Earlier this year, I spent part of a day with documentary filmmaker and former congressional candidate Aaron Woolf in Elizabethtown.

Woolf and other community members are actively renovating what they hope will be a community center of sorts downtown. We had dinner that evening at his Deer's Head Inn establishment and I offered him an opportunity to write about his congressional run against Elise Stefanik in 2014, the project in Elizabethtown or anything else he felt strongly about.

Woolf submitted a guest essay to The Front Page this weekend and it will post on Tuesday morning.

Hope you get a chance to check it out.

---

Death with dignity

I approached writing about the "death with dignity" issue - assisted suicide - last week with trepidation.

It's an issue that comes with a lot of emotional baggage and I suspected most people would not want to hear about it.

What was unexpected was the number of readers who shared their own stories of dying loved ones and the helplessness they felt over the circumstances. There was a lot of support for a New York law.

---

The Play

I spent all of last week working diligently on the latest theatrical version of The Last American Newspaper - Ace Hardware, Chapman Museum, Battenkill Books still have the book - in hopes of public reading hosting by the Adirondack Theater Festival sometime in the near future.

Thanks to so many of you for showing an interest in the work and wanting to know how this little adventure of mine is going.

Coming soon to a theater near you - hopefully.

---

Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.