Guess Who’s Coming To The Debates

If Republican Jodi Rell has her way, this man — Green Party candidate Cliff Thornton — will get to join her and Democratic candidate John DeStefano at this fall’s gubernatorial debates. The DeStefano campaign isn’t crazy about the idea.

The DeStefano and Rell campaigns are in the early stages of negotiating how many debates to hold in the fall campaign and under what terms. Gov. Rell says she wants to include Thornton, who has gathered enough qualified signatures to make the fall ballot.

“We believe that all qualified candidates for the gubernatorial ballot should be included in both the discussions and the debates themselves,” Rell’s campaign manager, Kevin M. Deneen, wrote in a Sept. 1 letter to DeStefano campaign chief Henry Fernandez.

“He has qualified for the statewide ballot, and his party has nominated candidates for various statewide, federal and other state offices,” Deneen elaborated in response to a question from the Independent. ​“He has earned the right to participate.”

Deneen also noted that Thornton would be the first African-American candidate to participate in a gubernatorial debate in Connecticut.

Thornton’s campaign, meanwhile, is pushing for inclusion. ​“Debate access should be a fundamental right for candidates who earn their way onto the ballot,” said Thornton Campaign Director Ken Krayeske. ​“We can measure the health of our democracy not just by how many candidates are on the ballot, but by how many voices are included in the debates, the one free forum that educates millions of voters.”

Thornton, a retired SNET exec who heads a criminal-justice reform group called Efficacy, has run an energetic campaign. His main issue is rolling back the drug war but he has advanced a full platform calling for, among other things, universal health care.

Derek Slap, DeStefano’s campaign spokesman, argued that his candidate deserves a direct one-on-one contest with Rell. ​“It is common practice for incumbents to use third parties as a smokescreen not to have a serious face-to-face debate with a challenger,” Slap said. ​“I don’t know if that’s the case here. That’s certainly our concern. You have less time for the governor and Mayor DeStefano to contrast their leadership and their ideas.”

Slap subsequently took a harder stand in a letter sent to the Rell campaign. The letter accused Rell of seeking to avoid a ​“one-on-one debate with John DeStefano” by trying to include Thornton. He invoked the Commission for Presidential Debate Guidelines requiring candidates to have 15 percent popular support in five different national public opinion polls in order to qualify for a debate; and League of Women Voters criteria requiring ​“solid financial support.” ​“Whatever criteria one uses, it is clear there are only two candidates who have a serious chance at being elected governor in Connecticut,” Slap wrote.

In political campaigns, popular incumbents (Rell leads DeStefano 2 – 1 in the polls) generally prefer to include minor-party candidates in debates in order to reduce the stature of their main challenger. Similarly, major-party challengers tend to seek to exclude third-party debaters in the hope of getting as much precious public airtime as possible to make their case against the incumbent, and to avoid losing needed anti-incumbent votes to another candidate. In this campaign, Rell (pictured) has so far pursued a ​“Rose Garden” strategy in her reelection campaign. She has relied on occasional photo ops and limited her exposure to the public and to the press, apparently hoping to ride her high poll ratings to victory.

“While cynics may see political motivations behind Gov. Rell’s call for Mr. Thornton’s participation in the debates,” Krayeske argued, ​“the Thornton for Governor campaign understands the tremendous pressures bearing on Gov. Rell to maintain duopoly rule and to actively suppress additional viewpoints… We applaud Gov. Rell’s courageous leaderhip here, and we are proud that she respects the will of the 13,000 registered voters who signed petitions seeking to place us on the ballot.”

How Many Is Enough?

Slap, of the DeStefano campaign, argued that a line needs to be drawn somewhere in deciding who gets to debate. He noted that six candidates are running for governor. He added that the state has not yet certified Thornton’s position on the ballot.

Daniel Tapper of the Secretary of the State’s Office said Thornton has submitted enough verified signatures to make the ballot. Only a technicality remains — submitting a ​“certificate of endorsement” from the Green Party. He has until Sept. 13 to submit it. Krayeske said the party was waiting until formalizing its lieutenant governor candidate, Jean DeSmet of Windham.

There won’t be six gubernatorial candidates on the ballot, according to Tapper. Two minor-party candidates failed to collect enough signatures. But there will be a fourth candidate: perennial gubernatorial hopeful Joseph Zdonczyk of the Concerned Citizens Party. He runs each cycle on a single-issue platform, against abortion. He has participated in past debates. He doesn’t generally organize a campaign beyond that. He couldn’t be reached for comment on deadline Tuesday.

Asked about Zdonczyk, who unlike Thornton would probably draw votes from Rell, Kevin Deneen responded, ​“His participation in the debates should be part of our discussions with the DeStefano campaign.”