Ed Bryant, Republican candidate for our U.S. Senate seat, has called upon his opponents to participate in a series of debates across the state. The proposed format is with local talk radio hosts as moderators. The idea is that people will listen if they are moderated by local personalities from the talk radio format because these hosts tend to know the relevant issues.
So far Van Hilleary has accepted. However, Mr. Corker has declined to participate. So one must ask the question, why would Bob Corker decline to appear in a series of debates across the state? This is especially puzzling when Mr. Corker is behind in the polls and is not very well known in other regions of the state outside of the Chattanooga area. With Mr. Corker and his campaign spending over $1.6 million to boost name recognition, why not jump at this chance?
The only thing we can do is to speculate on why Mr. Corker has declined to debate his opponents in this format. Maybe it is because talk radio, though it runs the gambit of ideology, does tend to be very conservative. Maybe Mr. Corker feels that a possible conservative slant to these debates would not be in his best interest.
Mr. Corker already has a history of ducking out of debates. Back during the State of the Union speech in Washington, Mr. Corker refused to participate in a debate with Van Hilleary and Ed Bryant. He decided instead to go to Washington to hear the speech and stay afterwards to attend a fundraiser by a Washington lobbyist.
So far we have only seen the scripted Bob Corker in 30-second sound bytes. How can a serious candidate for the U.S. Senate not be ready to discuss the hard and difficult issues facing our state? I am sure that Mr. Corker is capable of speaking off the cuff but maybe that would not benefit a man who is trying to hide behind a cloak of conservative double talk. I for one would love to hear all three debating the issues across the state and with local people. Let J.R. and Wally or Kevin West have at it with them all. If someone wants to be my U.S. senator then I would rather hear their views from the horse’s mouth than from a multi-million dollar ad campaign. Hopefully, that is not all we get from the Corker campaign.
We all have a right to support whatever candidate we choose but all Tennesseeans deserve to hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from each candidate. So the only reason I can see that someone would not participate is because they have something to hide. Please Bob, say it ain't so.
Jonathan Fickley
jfickley@yahoo.com