Hawkins Agrees to Congressional Debates
Howie Hawkins for Congress
25th District, New York
www.howiehawkins.org
Media Release
For Immediate Release: Monday, July 21, 2008
For More Information: Howie Hawkins, 315-425-1019, hhawkins@igc.org
Howie Hawkins, the Green Populist candidate for Congress in the 25th District, agreed today to the recent challenge by one of his opponents, Democrat Dan Maffei, for a series of publicly televised debates.
Maffei's letter proposing the debates was not delivered to Hawkins, but only to the Republican candidate, Dale Sweetland. Maffei proposed debates between the two major party candidates only.
"Maffei's attempt to limit the candidates reminds me of another Democrat, Boss Tweed. The old Tammany Hall boss liked to say he was happy to let the people vote in the winner as long as he got to select the candidates," Hawkins said.
"America is not a two-party dictatorship. Voters have the right elect anybody they want to," Hawkins added.
Maffei's letter to Sweetland asked for a series of five debates: three issue-specific debates focusing on the economy, the Iraq war, and healthcare, as well as two general debates, one each in Syracuse and the western portion of the district.
"We also need a debate on the energy and climate crises," Hawkins said. "If the next Congress doesn't act quickly on a massive scale to address peaking global oil production and accelerating planetary heating, our proposals on other issues will soon be rendered irrelevant by the resulting economic and ecological mayhem."
Polls consistently show that voters want to see third party candidates included in debates. For instance, a September 22, 2004 Zogby poll found that 57% of the voters wanted independent candidate Ralph Nader included in the presidential debates in 2004. Nader, who is again running as an independent for president in 2008, has endorsed Hawkins' congressional bid this year.
The US Supreme Court has ruled "it is of particular importance the candidates have the opportunity to make their views known so that the electorate may intelligently evaluate the candidates' personal qualities and their positions on vital public issues before choosing among them on Election Day." (Buckley v. Valeo, 424 US 1).
Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California (274 US 357) wrote: "Those who won our independence believed that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."
- 30-
designed by union labor