FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 17 December 200 Contact: Jill Stein, 617-852-4727, Michael Horan, 617-515-2139

VOTERS DESERVE OPEN SENATE DEBATES SAYS GREEN-RAINBOW PARTY

Including independent candidate Joseph L. Kennedy in the upcoming Senate election debates is important, according to Green-Rainbow Party Green-Rainbow Co-chair Michael Horan. “Voters deserve to hear more voices, not fewer. After all, the largest voting bloc in the state are the independents who have declined to join either the Democratic or Republican parties. They account for about half of the state’s registered voters. Why should we force these voters to listen to only to a Democrat and a Republican?”

Horan added “Voters also need to see if the major party candidates can defend their positions against others with quite different points of view. Seeing how they face up to an independent candidate gives voters a better sense of how they will perform in the Senate.”

Jill Stein, who was excluded from all but two debates when she ran for governor in 2002 was understandably sympathetic to Kennedy. “All too often the two big party candidates practice triangulation - which means they move as close to each other as possible so that they don’t give up any votes in the middle ground. This results in boring debates that take place within a very narrow part of the political spectrum. Such debates avoid issues which neither party wants to talk about. And some of those suppressed issues are important - such as whether Beacon Hill politicians are collecting too much money from special interests.”

After being excluded from debates in 2002, Stein and independent candidate Barbara Johnson filed a lawsuit against the Boston Globe and other debate sponsors charging that holding debates exclusively for the Democratic and Republican candidates amounted to an illegal in-kind campaign contribution to those parties. While this lawsuit failed to open up the debates, it led several debate sponsors to promise to be more inclusive in the future.

Horan was not surprised that the Boston Globe endorsed exclusionary debates in an editorial. “It’s consistent with their newsroom practice, which often imposes an effective blackout on coverage of any candidates other than those of the two major parties. After focusing for weeks on the petty spats between major party candidates, we then see articles lamenting the fact that the voters aren’t excited about the choices before them.”

Stein added “Polls have shown that even when a candidate is well behind the frontrunners, voters want to see them in the debates and hear what they have to say. Voters shouldn’t have the choice of who they can hear made for them by the news media or by politicians trying to eliminate their competition. Debate is the corner stone of a healthy democracy. Let's open them up and keep them open.”

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