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Summary: I'm happy with what I said and how I said it; candidates were amicable and not very confrontational to each other; very limited audience feedback.
Lessons: Memorization and time limits are your friend; notes and scripts are only good for total brainlock emergencies. Have a standard best closing line. Don't assume local press will attend (or even know).
Thirty minutes before the forum, we three candidates met with Canada College President Rosa Perez, who basically used the time to cheerlead for community college funding. I asked how much of her expenses were paid for by fees, and she said less than half. I was too polite to interrupt her pitch to point out that if fees are as much of a bargain as she was claiming, then it would seem reasonable for the college to be self-funded.
As we entered the auditorium there was an audience of only about four, but by the time we started we had at least forty. (The forum was videotaped for broadcast on local community access channels.) The grandmotherly LWV moderator seemed a little inexperienced: she initially was going to skip right past our opening statements, twice needed to be reminded to let the Republican have a turn to answer questions, and repeatedly let Eshoo ignore the 60-second stop sign.
Practicing my opening statement turned out to be very worthwhile. I had a couple of mispronunciations, but memorization of my flow of points helped eliminate the umms and ahs. My main regret is that I accidentally skipped over my line about "out of your wallet/bedroom". My $2 voter challenge got a noticeable audience reaction. Eshoo's noticeable reaction indicated that she hadn't heard or been told about it, despite the press mention of my challenge in her (uncompetitive) race.
Indeed, given Eshoo's expected 40-point margin of victory, it's nice of her to even show up. (Haugen asked her before we started whether she would make Thursday's forum, and she replied that we would criticize her if she missed the votes scheduled that day in D.C. I then joked that she could miss all the votes she wants -- the less she legislates, the better.) She didn't go after either of us opponents explicitly, but instead just criticized the Bush administration. She didn't even bother bragging about her legislative record or her pork for the district.
We each had 60 seconds to answer the written audience questions:
- Lowering the voting age - Surprisingly, Eshoo favored lowering it to 16. I echoed Eshoo's opening point about Bush's deficits, and said the Democrats' entitlement programs are even worse for young voters.
- Iraq - I disagreed with the LP notion that duty to defend liberty stops at our borders, and stated my platform position: http://marketliberal.org/Platform.html#8.6._Southwest_Asia_
- Immigration - I again disagreed with the LP: http://marketliberal.org/Platform.html#9.2._Citizenship. Haugen demurred on my point that immigration costs pale next to entitlements for middle-class citizens.
- Pledge of Allegiance - Lamely, Eshoo said keep "under God" in.
- Economic Recovery - We're in a productivity-led recovery. Government shouldn't attempt to fine-tune the business cycle.
- Gay Marriage - Eshoo lamely said just that she would oppose an anti-gay-marriage amendment. Her answer was after mine, so I didn't correct her statement that there had never been an amendment to limit rights (cf. prohibition, income tax).
- Campaign Finance - I disagreed with the premise that there's too much money in politics. I don't begrudge my opponents' their fundraising lead, without it I'd "probably clean their clocks".(If I'd known this line wouldn't get a laugh, I wouldn't have said it.)
- Patriot Act - Repeal it, but pointed out that the sky is not falling.
- Foreign Oil - The problem with oil is not that it's foreign, it's that it pollutes. Criticized Eshoo's mileage requirements, said we should instead tax fuel and pollution.
They expanded the closing statements from 60 to 90 seconds, and I decided not to try to repeat some subset of my opening statement's lesson about left/right/libertarian. So I spoke about federalism, and attacked politicians who take taxes to D.C. just to send them back home to solve local problems. I also criticized incumbents who tax your neighbor to buy your vote, tax you to buy your neighbor's vote, and hope neither of you notice. Not sure of my time, I closed with one suboptimal line saying "check out the Libertarian alternative to Left and Right".
The Republican's subsequent closer started by saying he "doesn't know what Left and Right means", but that he agreed with my point about federalism, on which he spent his entire close. Eshoo ignored these twin attacks in her generic Democrat close, and got immediate unmediated applause at the end that was pretty obviously more for her than her opponents. (The audience was mostly community college students, with 45% Latino enrollment.)
I thought I did reasonably well, but it couldn't have been too great, or else Eshoo wouldn't have told me afterward that I "did very well". One or two audience members told me I did well, but there was very little action at the party tables outside between my session and the next. Also, I looked for evidence of press attendance, but saw none. I hadn't seen the event listed in the best local newspaper community calendar, and realized too late that it wouldn't have hurt to have made sure local political reporters knew about the event.
I made a 12Mb audio recording on my PocketPC (though it has a few split-second skips in it for some reason). If I can't record the video off cable access, I'll ask the organizers for a copy of the tape.
Tomorrow: my first editorial board endorsement interview.
Brian Holtz
Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley)
http://marketliberal.org
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