On Monday, April 17, a hearing will be held in the Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee in Sacramento on Assemblyman Lloyd Levine’s (D-SF Valley) legislation to establish state-sponsored candidate debates for the office of Governor.
Levine’s legislation, which appears below in its entirety, would require the California Secretary of State to establish a "Gubernatorial Debate Commission" to hold three debates and establish rules and formats for each debate. Currently, such debates are sponsored in California by private charities and news media outlets according to rules of nonpartisanship established by the Internal Revenue Service. Levine’s bill would add a series of three "state-sponsored" debates managed according to published rules established by a Commission of uncertain composition appointed by the Secretary of State.
AB 970, as introduced, Levine. Election campaigns: candidates’
debates.
Existing law encourages every candidate for public office in this
state to subscribe to the Code of Fair Campaign Practices, which
generally provides that a candidate will pledge to conduct his or her
campaign in accordance with the basic principles of decency,
honesty, and fair play in order that, after vigorously contested, but
fairly conducted campaigns, the citizens of this state may exercise
their constitutional right to vote, free from dishonest and unethical
practices which tend to prevent the full and free expression of the
will of the voters. The purpose of the Code of Fair Campaign
Practices is to give voters guidelines in determining fair play and
to encourage candidates to discuss issues instead of untruths or
distortions.
This bill would require the Secretary of State to create the
California Gubernatorial Debate Commission for the purpose of
inviting candidates for Governor to a series of 3 debates in
specified locations and of establishing the rules and formats of each
debate, as specified.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.
State-mandated local program: no.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. Chapter 6.5 (commencing with Section 20505) is added to
Division 20 of the Elections Code, to read:
CHAPTER 6.5. CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL DEBATE COMMISSION
20505. (a) The Secretary of State shall establish the California
Gubernatorial Debate Commission. The commission shall be responsible
for inviting candidates for Governor to a series of three debates and
for establishing the rules and formats of each debate. Each
candidate shall be notified of the rules and format at least 10
calendar days prior to each debate.
(b) The commission shall hold a total of three debates prior to
each general election for the office of Governor as follows:
(1) The first debate shall be held not less than 40 days nor more
than 55 days prior to the election.
(2) The second debate shall be held not less than 21 days nor more
than 27 days prior to the election.
(3) The third debate shall be held not less than four days nor
more than 10 days prior to the election.
(c) The rules for each debate may vary, except that all debates
shall comply with all of the following conditions:
(1) Each debate shall be held on a weekday between 6 p.m. and 8
p.m..
(2) Each debate shall be at least 60 minutes long.
(3) Each debate shall be in a location with enough space to seat
an audience of at least 100 members of the general public in addition
to credentialed media, campaign staff, and other invited guests.
(d) One debate shall be held in Southern California, one in the
Central San Joaquin Valley of California, and one in Northern
California. The locations for the first, second, and third debate
shall rotate with each gubernatorial election.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Jim, would love to hear your opinion on this bill. It strikes me that in some respects, there is a free-market that exists in terms of factors in a campaign such as debates. Is there a precident for government mandating how many debates take place?
April 7th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Yes, Jon, I am opposed to this bill because I believe that government’s role in managing the “time, place and manner” of elections; and in regulating against corruption, does not include stage-managing and paying for candidate debates. This bill creates for even the most extreme and bizarre, self-promoting candidates (as in the special that elected our current Governor) what amounts to an enforceable right (thru the government involvement) to an equal seat at the table. These debates will therefore become meaningless, a zoo, a theater of the absurd, with candidates of all sizes, shapes, and philosophies, far outside the remote extremes of our system, hoping up and down at the most tangenial of issues, for two straight hours, demanding their “equal” rights and drowning out the messages of the real candidates that the people want and need to hear, and all paid for by you and me.
Even the IRS recognizes that not every “legally qualified” candidate is entitled to participate in a debate. But once you add the government in the mix, exclusion of the most perverse of these candidates will be practically impossible. Below is a legal slug I recently sent to my election law colleagues about the current status of regulation of privately-held debates, which allows for some discrimination, and which I think are adequate to assure fairness entirely through the private sector involvement of charities and news media outlets who usually do these debates:
The Courts have ruled that even a charity can hold a debate limited to the candidates of one party Fulani v. League of Women Voters, 882 F.2d 621 (2d Cir. 1989).
IRS Rev. Ruling 86-95 says a charity will not be engaging in unlawful political intervention if it has a debate where these factors are present (in a greater or lesser degree):
-all legally qualified candidates are invited;
-questions were prepared and presented by independent panel;
-topics cover a broad range of issues;
-each candidate has equal chance to present his/her views;
-the moderator is not biased in expressing approval/diisapproval for candidate.
The Federal Election Commission allows charities to stage nonpartisan candidate debates, the structure of which is left to the organization, provided the debates include at least two candidates and are nonpartisan. 11 CFR 110.13.
In determining whether a debate by a charity is illegal political intervention, both the FEC and the IRS consider:
-whether inviting all legally qualified candidates is impractical;
-whether the organization has adopted reasonable, objective criteria in determining which candidates to invite;
-whether the criteria was applied consistently and non-arbitrarily;
-whether other factors, such as in Rev. Rul. 86-95 (above) indicate the debate was conducted in a neutral manner. IRS TAM 96-35-003 (April 19, 1996)