Anatomy of a candidates' Forum (and why we've excluded the mayor and district candidates)

Earlier this month, Chewie visited my blog to raise a very good point about our candidates' forum for the at-large candidates for the Greensboro City Council:

"Not trying to make more work for everybody, but I was wondering why the limitation to the At-Large Candidates. I'd like to hear from others, and put questions to them -- including the Mayor -- even if they're running unopposed."

She's not the only person who feels this way.

Others have contacted me to ask why our candidates' forum will only include at-large candidates.

First of all, I agree completely with Chewie and others who have raised this concern.

I would prefer for our forum to include ALL the candidates for Greensboro City Council, including the two who are running unopposed.

I first brought up the idea of bloggers organizing and sponsoring a candidates' forum at the August 17th blog meet-up.

Among those present at that meet-up, we discussed a lot of different issues concerning the candidates' forum.

We decided that including ALL 23 Greensboro City Council candidates in one forum would not allow any candidate much time to address the audience.

We may have discussed holding two forums, but I believe the consensus was that our best approach would be to focus on organizing one smaller forum, particularly since this would be our first.

There were a lot of uncertainties in the back of my mind about arranging a candidates' forum.

I thank the other bloggers, particularly Roch Smith, Jr. (see bottom biography), for supporting the idea, because without their support, I could have easily convinced myself that it wouldn't be worth the risks of trying to get the idea off the ground and into the air.

These are some of the risks I considered:

1. Finding an "open" date to hold our forum.

2. Finding an adequate location for our forum.

3. Getting most or all of the candidates to participate.

4. Planning it well enough that it will be a success.

5. Getting citizens to attend.

6. Finding and making the time to plan and organize the forum.

So that all of the at-large candidates would be able to participate, we wanted to hold the forum before the October 11th municipal primary.

At the bloggers' meet-up, we came up with two potential dates for our forum, September 22nd and September 27th.

We didn't want to hold it too early in the campaign season, and we wanted to give ourselves adequate time to plan and organize.

We also wanted to avoid scheduling it on dates that would conflict with other major events in our community, primarily the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro and Converge South.

We obviously wanted to set ours on a different date from forums being sponsored by other groups.

To find out if other forums might already be scheduled on the potential dates we had chosen, I contacted at-large candidate Diane Davis.

No forums were scheduled on those two days, but Diane had conflicts on both dates.

That bothered me because Diane is one candidate I definitely wanted to participate in our forum.

But we had already determined that there would be other conflicts on just about any other day.

So we chose September 27th as the date for our candidates' forum.

Immediately, Roch and I contacted several places to find out if they might be available and not too costly for us to use them as the location for our forum.

Knowing that it was imperative for us to secure a location quickly, I became slightly concerned when we discovered that some of the sites we wanted to pursue either cost too much or were unavailable.

Credit goes to Roch for securing the Weatherspoon Art Gallery Auditorium on UNC-G's campus. (I believe Roch initially contacted Ed Cone about the availability of this auditorium and its suitability.)

Even after we thought the Weatherspoon Art Gallery Auditorium was secure as our definite site, a few slight complications arose. Again, Roch deserves praise for working through these potential obstacles. (He and I visited the auditorium this past Tuesday so that we can be better assured of being on top of the logistics for the forum. I think it's going to serve our purpose extremely well, and hope we can fill the house with citizens!)

We sent out a letter weeks ago inviting all 8 at-large candidates to participate.

It took a few days to hear back from the first candidate.

Florence Gatten e-mailed me to let us know that she planned to participate. As Roch pointed out, this was reassuring since Gatten (who is already on the council as a district representative) must be regarded as one of the most serious at-large contenders.

Three other candidates responded within a few more days.

But when I woke up this past Monday morning, I still had not heard from 4 (half) of the candidates.

By the end of the day, two more had contacted me to say that they planned to participate.

And a day later, I had secured the final two commitments.

Unless anything goes wrong or comes up, ALL 8 at-large candidates will participate in the forum on September 27th. (That's pretty exciting, if you ask me! All the more reason why YOU should be there!!!)

Roch has been a superior partner-in-crime for pulling this off.

He's had experience himself as a 2001 mayoral candidate, and that's been invaluable to our planning process.

We still have an important week-and-a-half to try to make sure that we've covered all bases. Roch and I both have a very sincere desire for this to be a full-fledged success. Anything less will be disappointing for us, if no one else. (And I imagine that others, including the candidates, would be, at the very least, disappointed if this event turned out not to be as successful as we all hope.)

We won't find out until September 27th how many citizens will choose to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to learn more about the candidates and become better informed for the sake of their decision-making at the polls.

YOU can help by making your own plans to attend.

Candidates should feel welcome to invite friends and family. (George Subasavage's wife received a personal invitation from me to attend, and she sounded genuinely surprised that we welcome her attendance. But we do!)

YOU should feel free to invite your friends, neighbors, and loved ones.

If you're truly ambitious, invite perfect strangers too! (Yes, we even welcome them!)

Finding and making the time to do all the necessary groundwork was perhaps my greatest concern.

The decision to move forward with our idea for a candidates' forum came on August 17th, two days before the official beginning of the 2005-2006 school year for Guilford County Schools teachers. My year began unofficially on August 18th at a co-teaching workshop I had to attend at Jamestown Middle School. (I wish the idea had come up at the July blog meet-up. In the future, starting earlier to plan and organize such forums might be both possible and beneficial.)

For me, the beginning of the school year is always intense and demanding. If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you might have noticed that the pattern of my blogging has changed since the beginning of the school year. That's because I pour quite a bit of my time and energy into my job. During the summer, I had more time to blog. As soon as the school year began, I automatically had less.

For the sake of the forum, I have to find and make time to take care of all the responsibilities I've agreed to take on to ensure its success.

Without Roch, it wouldn't necessarily be impossible, but it would be A LOT more difficult to do all the things that need to be done. He's done a considerable amount of the work, and for that, I've extremely appreciative and grateful. He's also allowed his baby, Greensboro101, to serve as the primary sponsor, and that also has made a very positive difference.

Today is Saturday, September 17th.

YOU must submit questions that you would like to ask the at-large candidates no later than 11:59 PM Sunday, September 18th.

Bloggers will get together Wednesday, September 21st at the bloggers meet-up to vote on which questions will be asked at the forum.

The forum will be held Tuesday, September 27th.

Voters (I certainly hope this includes YOU) will go to the primary polls on Tuesday, October 11th.

6 of the 8 at-large candidates will advance to the general election on Tuesday, November 8th.

Voters (again, hopefully including YOU) will determine which 3 candidates will serve as our at-large representatives during the general election (again, to be held on Tuesday, November 8th).

By September 28th, we will be able to evaluate how the candidates' forum goes.

I want it to be an absolute success, but I do not expect it to be completely perfect.

We will all learn from this experience.

My hope is that it will be successful enough for us to want to pursue making similar forums a reality for future elections in our community.

My hope is that we will gain the confidence from this experience to feel comfortable planning and organizing enough forums in the future to accommodate ALL candidates (even the unopposed ones!).

In the meantime, if you're one of the people who understandably is disappointed that the September 27th forum won't be covering more territory, try to appreciate the ground we are trying to cover this year, know that we too would prefer to be doing even more than we are, and expect us to expand and improve in the future!