Big Debate Tonight: Leg. Dist. 7 GOP Challenger Debates... Nobody

League of Women Voters documents provide some possible ground rules for an "empy chair" debate

There's been a fascinating political development in Weber County politics this week, as is highlighted by this morning's Standard-Examiner lead editorial.

Some time in the interim since the March Weber County GOP nominating convention, county party chairman Matt Bell decided to schedule a debate, pitting four term veteran House Legislative District 7 incumbent Glenn Donnelson against upstart intra-party challenger Ryan Wilcox. Donnelson and Wilcox had emerged from the county convention with a virtual tie vote, and chairmen Bell thought it would be a good idea to hold a debate event, allowing Legislative District 7 GOP voters a pre-primary opportunity to compare and differentiate between the two candidates. So far, so good.

Unfortunately the devil was in the details, and the situation began to spiral downward last week. We'll attempt to set forth the sequential development of this story below:

The first public hint of dissension appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune last Friday, when columnist Paul Rolly reported that the Executive Director of the Utah Republican Party had allegedly taken action to stifle the debate. The Tribune followed up with a similar second article later that day.

The situation appeared on the Weber County public radar screen on on Tuesday, with a Scott Schwebke story, which basically reiterated the information contained in the two earlier Tribune articles.

Also on Tuesday, Chairman Bell offered his own assessment of the situation on the Weber County Republican blog, touting principles of "open government" and populist democracy as trumping any single candidate's interest in exploiting "the power of incumbency."

Although it's not entirely clear from any of the above articles whether Representative Donnelson ever formally agreed to participate in this debate, it's evident at this juncture that Donnelson has indicated he will not appear, and that tonight's event will be what's called in savvy political circles an "empty chair debate." And that's where the situation gets tricky, we think.

Being the curious type, we navigated to the the League of Women Voters website, looking for guidance on the touchy question of how to handle a debate when only one candidate is expected to participate. LWV procedure is the "gold standard" for the conduct of political debates, in our opinion; and here is what we found on the LWV site:

Guidelines For State And Local League Debates Including “Empty Chair” Debates.

We provide below a few selected excerpts from this LWV article:

"Empty Chair" Debates
It sometimes happens that only one candidate in a contested election accepts a debate invitation or that a candidate cancels a debate appearance after agreeing to participate, leaving the debate with only one participant — often called an "empty chair" debate. If only one candidate accepts the invitation, the debate should be canceled. While cancellation is also the most prudent course of action when a candidate fails to appear at the event or backs out shortly before the debate, Leagues may need to consider whether and how to proceed should they find themselves in an empty chair debate situation. [...].

We cite below LWV guidelines for state and local (non federal) debates:

• An empty chair debate should not be conducted if all but one candidate decline the League's offer to participate in a debate. It would be very risky for the League to sponsor the debate, knowing from the start that there will be only one participant.
• An empty chair debate could be conducted only if one or more candidates pull out of a scheduled debate after agreeing to participate, and rescheduling is not feasible. (A League could also choose to cancel the debate in this situation.)
• The closer to the scheduled debate that the candidate cancels his/her appearance, the stronger the arguments that going forward with the debate is not a partisan political activity.
• If the candidate cancels well enough in advance of the debate to allow the sponsoring League to make other arrangements without charge or penalty, the League should make some effort to see if the debate can be rescheduled.
• In announcing that a candidate has canceled his/her participation in a debate, the League should present the factual reasons given by the candidate, if any, without any editorial comment. If no reason is given by the candidate, the League should simply state that it was contacted by the candidate or his/her campaign and told that the candidate would not be able to appear at the debate; the League can also state that the candidate provided no reason for canceling his/her participation.
• To maintain a clear record, the League should correspond in writing with candidates concerning invitations to appear at debates, attempts to accommodate each candidate's schedule, confirmation of scheduled debate appearances, confirmation of the cancellation of a debate appearance and attempts, if any, to reschedule a canceled appearance.
• In conducting any empty chair debate, the League should maintain, to the extent practicable, the debate format. The League must prevent the debate from turning into a candidate appearance that has the look, feel and content of a campaign rally for the only candidate attending the debate. The moderator and other panelists, therefore, should ask nonpartisan questions, the length of the candidate's response should be limited, and if possible, the moderator and other panelists should act as devil's advocate, asking probing questions and follow-up questions. [Emphasis added].

Consider that to be our "two bits." Single candidate "debates" can be tricky, as we said. Hopefully tonight's event will closely follow true debate format, as set forth in the final paragraph above, and the event will not be allowed to descend into something resembling a single candidate's campaign rally.

If any of our readers plan to attend tonight's Leg. 7 event, we hope they'll take the time to report back on how it all shook out.