LOWV & KEET

The Eureka Reporter directs some well deserved praise to the League Of Women Voters and KEET T.V. for their tradition of hosting candidate forums each election season.

We take these candidate forums for granted and , sure, every so often you'll hear a complaint of some kind about them. I give them credit, though, for routinely inviting all candidates to their forums. It's not so much an issue in non- partisan as in partisan races.

At least some LOWV chapters around the state exclude third parties, only inviting the Republican or Democrat candidates. I understand Butte County LOWV only invited the Rep and Dem candidates to a congressional candidate forum a few weeks ago.

I remember hearing of one candidate forum being held in the Los Angeles area a few years ago, although I'm not so sure this was a LOWV sponsored forum. Only the Republican and Democrat candidates were invited.

But the Libertarian Party candidate in the race, Ted Brown, was made aware of the event and showed up anyway. When the other two candidates were asked to take their places on stage, Ted Brown got up and joined them.

The moderator is a bit confused and asks Ted what he thinks he's doing and he explains that he's also a candidate and should be in the debate with his opponents. He's told he wasn't invited and they go back and forth for a few minutes resulting in the police being called.

The police come and Ted is led outside. From hearing Ted tell it, when the cops heard his story they sided with him and thought it was unfair, but it was their forum to be run the way they saw fit. Ted ended up leaving but had a fun story to tell.

Again; I'm not sure that was a LOWV event, but such things happen fairly regularly in other places. We should be thankful our LOWV chapter is pretty even handed in their hosting of forums and debates.