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Your opinion
November 11, 2007
I was disturbed to read about the handling of the voters forum conducted by the League of Women Voters for the Rochester Board of Education.
Whenever candidates or speakers running for office are invited to participate in a public forum, there must be absolute control to ensure that any bias is removed from tainting the process.
Candidates in particular have made a monumental commitment by deciding to put their names, their finances, and their family lives on the line to participate in the tough “fish bowl” arena of politics. When bias or corruption is involved in a forum that forum loses all credibility. Lost credibility and reputation are difficult, if not impossible, to recover.
The North Oakland Republican Club has hosted many candidate forums and debates of various kinds over many years. The debates have, at times, included Democrats, representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, BAMN and various other groups. At all NORC debates, or candidate forums, all participants agree in advance to stringent decorum and ground rules.
We have never had to resort to hand written audience questions as these can be pre-selected by those with an agenda to help or hurt particular speakers. When one of our events has a question and answer format we reserve two or three times the total time for questions and allow each member of the audience to personally ask their own questions. This format prevents bias and leaves participates and audience members alike satisfied that the questions were not “spun” by organizers with an agenda. Our communities need good people to step foreword and run for office. The last thing our political system needs is to shut out good candidates with a corrupt process.
Jim Runestad
President of the North Oakland Republican Club.
Waterford Township
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