With debate negotiations already underway, the GOP candidate for governor now says the traditional format with an independent moderator would be "unfair" and a "trap."
Labor Day is still three weeks away, but Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, says he will not participate in standard debates this fall, claiming that the traditional format with an independent moderator would be “unfair” and a “trap” for him.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, Mastriano wrote that he was “eager” to debate, but claimed that moderators from mainstream media outlets are “unpaid advocates and ideological allies of the Democrat candidates.”
Instead, Mastriano proposed debates that would each have two moderators — one selected by each campaign — who would ask an equal number of questions of the candidates. The costs, he said, would be covered by the campaigns or state political parties.
“The old model of unfair debates run by the mainstream news media or hosts with a hidden partisan agenda is not something I will entertain,” Mastriano wrote in the letter. “Let’s have fair debates or none at all.”
Debate negotiations with news outlets have been ongoing, and Mastriano’s proposal raises the possibility that the candidates will not meet in any debates.
The Shapiro campaign rejected Mastriano’s proposition, calling it an “obvious stunt.”
“Mastriano has spent his entire campaign refusing to answer questions from...
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