Villaraigosa Afraid To Debate Moore?

Villaraigosa Afraid To Debate Moore? By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor Of Los Angeles, WalterMooreForMayor.com November 6, 2008 When Villaraigosa filed his papers this week to run for re-election, he opted not to participate the City's matching funds program. Regular readers of my newsletter will recall I predicted this. Why? Simple: he is afraid to debate me. Any candidate who accepts matching funds is legally required to debate all other candidates who qualify for matching funds. Two, and only two candidates have raised enough money to qualify for matching funds: Villaraigosa and me. Villaraigosa knows from experience that when voters hear the two of us debate, they will wind up supporting me, not him. We debated one another, and four other candidates, on the radio in 2005. Afterwards, 65% of the people who "voted" for the winner at the station's website voted for me. Villaraigosa and the other four candidates split the remaining 35%. The five of them succeeded in excluding me from the televised debates; they did not want the same thing happening with a bigger audience. Was the on-line poll scientific? No. But the results paralleled the reaction the six of us got during untelevised debates at high schools and colleges around town. Audiences who actually saw all six of us tended to support me. The problem was that the local media refused to cover my campaign, and excluded me from the televised debates, so most people in the City did not even know I was running. Villaraigosa, however, learned his lesson: he will try to avoid debating me on TV at all costs. And if he must debate me, he will try to force a format where reporters friendly to him will ask a serious of inane questions, and each of us will have only a minute to respond. After all, anyone can memorize a handful of vague one-minute answers. By contrast, I want a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, where each of us makes his case to the people, cross-examines the other, and then presents a rebuttal. Let the candidates, not reporters, define the issues. Let the candidates, in short, have a real debate. In any event, don't expect Villaraigosa to admit he is afraid to debate me. Indeed, if any of the local reporters even bothers to ask him why he turned down matching funds, he will presumably claim he did so to avoid straining the City's budget. But I want that reporter to ask him the follow-up question: Mr. Mayor, will you agree right here, right now, to debate Walter Moore in a one-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debate in January 2009? If he says yes, great. If he says anything else, we may have to start calling him "Polloraigosa."