Via The Arkansas Blog, we have some more details on the final pre-primary debate between AR-02 Democratic candidates.
Mark your calendar: The Arkansas Times will bring together the five Democratic candidates to succeed U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder for a debate at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Sticky Fingerz.
It will last about 90 minutes. The format will have conventional opening remarks and questioning by [Arkansas Blog] Associate Editor Gerard Matthews, but we’ll also take questions from the floor and relay e-mailed and Twittered questions as we live blog and Twitter. The Twitter tag — #ARK2D
This is an important event. Voting has begun and election day is only a week off. This race, along with most others, has been overshadowed by the outpouring of commercial time and news coverage of the Senate primaries. The Democratic primary for 2nd District has attracted what may be the best field, overall, of any single race on the ballot. I hope, particularly, to see some younger voters attracted by the River Market setting (we’d tried originally to get the Rep, but it wasn’t available) to listen in and look for persuasive differences among them
I agree with Max that this race features the best field of candidates in any of the statewide primaries (though, with Tim “Horrible Person” Wooldridge in AR-01(D), TIMMY! Griffin in AR-02(R), the MENSA meeting that is Beth Anne Rankin and Glenn Gallas in AR-04(R), TARP-toting Gilbert Baker and good ol’ Jim Holt in AR-Sen(R), and Gunner DeLay ranting about civil disobedience in AR-03(R), it’s not a real hard list to top).
I do hope that the demographic makeup of the audience for tomorrow’s debate will skew younger, however, and I have even greater hope that some new and pointed questions will come from that audience. Barring some sort of amazing performance in the last week, it is almost certain that this race will go to a runoff. As such, this will be a great opportunity for voters to press candidates on certain issues — EFCA, unions/labor, environment, financial reform — and make meaningful distinctions among the candidates.
Also, this seems like a great spot to remind everyone that BHR endorses John Adams in this race.