This just in from Team Carly’s Communication’s Honcho Julie Soderlund…
Yesterday Team Boxer and Team Carly met for the first time to discuss debates. As you know Carly is willing to debate Boxer pretty much anywhere, anytime. As a starting point Carly’s debate negotiation team comprised of political veterans Ken Khachigian and Beth Miller proposed a minimum debate schedule of five debates in local markets around the state in addition to two nationally televised debates. Team Boxer didn’t propose anything and said they would take our ideas back to Boxer’s camp. Below is the follow-up email Beth sent over to Dan and Ace that gives you the full rundown. We’ll keep you in the loop as this process develops!
Dear Dan and Ace —
Thank you for hosting the meeting with Ken Khachigian and me this morning. For me, there’s nothing like escaping the Sacramento heat to the cool San Francisco “summer” weather.
Per our discussion, we are initiating the process of accepting those media invitations we’ve received from outlets in the media markets we mentioned, including Los Angeles, Fresno, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento. We understand that you will be sharing our conversation with the Boxer campaign and preparing a counterproposal. In order that we do not lose any planning time, we will be talking with the stations to get a sense of what they are thinking in terms of timing, event format, etc. As we also mentioned, we will be sharing with the stations our goal of having several of the debates be conducted in a town hall format in addition to the more traditional two-podium/moderator/questioner format.
As this race will be one of national interest — and national implications — we recognize the interest from national media outlets in addition to our own California media. To that point, I wanted to reiterate that we have accepted the debate invitations from Fox News with Chris Wallace and Meet the Press. We anticipate these programs will occur post-Labor Day.
We await your thoughts and look forward to providing the voters of California with many opportunities to hear our two candidates talk about the issues that concern them this election year.
Yours truly,
Beth