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Saturday, November 4, 2006

The Morning After The Walk Out

11/04/2006 07:53:00 AM 9 comments




Wow!
Yesterday was something else, indeed.

Coverage of The Walk Out

WWNC Podcasts:

1st Hour

2nd Hour

3rd Hour

Snapshot of WHKP Webpage

Asheville Citizen-Times initial coverage below:



Shuler walks out of debate after Taylor changes plans (updated with audio)

by STAFF REPORTS
published November 3, 2006 3:23 pm

ASHEVILLE – A debate scheduled to take place this afternoon between Congressman Charles Taylor and challenger Heath Shuler fell through after the candidates' opening statements.

Shuler walked out of the studio, saying he would not debate Taylor if the congressman would not show up in person as originally agreed.


AC-T Audio of part of the action.

Scrutiny Hooligan Coverage:
The Waiting Game

Before the Talking Points were issued

Live Blogging

Talking Points: Spinning The Walk Out Edition

Apply a little humor


Petulant Rumblings initial Coverage, and follow-up.

My own initial coverage (with several updates in the post), and The Dress Rehersal.

As usual, Ashvegas keeps it humorous.

West and Center warmup and the pitch.

Charlotte Observer


That's about it for now, gotta go take care of some weekend stuff.

This hit my mailbox from the Shuler Campaign before I could shut down. Better late than never, I suppose.

Taylor Ducks Debate at Last Minute
Thinks Rules Don’t Apply to Him

Asheville, NC – Today, Heath Shuler was in the WWNC radio studio for his scheduled debate with Charles Taylor. Charles Taylor, however, failed to follow the rules and show up.

“I am extremely disappointed that Charles Taylor failed to show up for the scheduled debate today. I have attended eight debates throughout this district over the past few months that Mr. Taylor has failed to attend. Today, I was at WWNC for my ninth debate, and once again Charles Taylor failed to show up -- just as he has failed to show up for the working families of this district for the past sixteen years.” said Shuler.

“Matt Mittan and the staff of AM 570 WWNC did a fine job of putting together this debate for the people of Western North Carolina . It is terribly unfortunate that Charles Taylor has once again decided that he doesn’t need to follow the rules. That’s the problem with Charles Taylor, he thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

The rules of the debate were agreed to several days ago. The rules stated that both candidates would be in the WWNC studio with one staff member. Candidates would then answer questions from the listeners that had been emailed to Matt Mittan, the host and moderator. Both campaigns had agreed that the debate would take place between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. Charles Taylor did not inform Mr. Mittan and WWNC until 12:30 p.m. today that he would not be in the studio for the debate as he had agreed.

“It would have been unacceptable for Charles Taylor to sit hidden somewhere with his staff feeding him answers and talking points. That is not a debate,” Shuler continued. “There have been many lies told about me during this campaign, and I wanted to see if Charles Taylor would look me in the eye and repeat those same lies.”

9 comments :

Thanks for the roundup, TP!

The AC-T, apart from a snarky editorial by Boyle and the brief you mentioned, seems to have ignored this story.

Cool! I had no idea that such a thing existed as that web snapshot page! Thanks for the tip!

For some strange reason I thought that WHKP would have taken that top picture off of the front page, but it's still up there. To these admittedly jaded eyes, it looks like proof of Shuler's assertion that no one had any way of knowing that Taylor had a bunch of people in the room with him, possibly handing him notes. And there he is, flanked by Sean Dalton, Deborah Potter and a gaggle of other people...

And that paper in front of Taylor could have been anything, really. There's no way to prove that they were last-minute talking points that he was stumbling over during those long pauses during his opening statement.

Anyway, good debate blog-around, TP!

By not showing up, Taylor has shown himself to be yellow.

I know one of the photographers who was in the studio at WHKP, and he says that while Congressman Taylor was taking calls, there was only one staff member in the room with him. And there was a group of home schoolers at the station who he had met with prior to him getting on the phone. They were there to witness democracy in action.

There was another photographer there, but I don't know him...

Can the photographer that you know who was @ WHKP on Friday afternoon confirm that the picture in question was taken *after* the debate fell through?

Not that it matters or anything - I've already voted (take a wild guess whom for!), and I'm quite certain that most people who haven't voted yet have already made up their minds as to who they're supporting on Tuesday. It's just a matter of curiosity. I really don't think this is going to amount to much.

I'll check with him on it. I am awaiting info on who the other photographer was, and in one photo I've seen, he is taking a pix while Congressman Taylor is on the air. If I can get ahold of one of his pix shot while my photographer shot one in which he is in the background, we should get a view of most of the interior of the studio, for those doubting thomases out there.

In my opinion, only the most careless and lazy of voters have not made their mind up. It's not like their was a lack of info one who stood where on most of the important issues.
My earlier predictions of a 4 point victory margin for Taylor still stand, with a plus or minus of 2 points.

With over 60,000 early voters, the turnout on Tuesday will tell all, and I'm thinking we might have to wait for a recount. *Shudders* And I have to work the next day, too.

Heh. I took both Tuesday and Wednesday as vacation days. :P

And, yeah, it's gonna be close. I'm thinking that no matter who is declared the winner initially, the other will demand a recount. We'll see.

I don't think that it will be close....I have a service related job and work in Haywood co most of the time. Even before the election I had numerous Liberal Dems all tell me the same thing "What was the party thinking running someone that has no public office experience for a federal office?" and conservative Dems say "I'm a Dem and I'm not going to vote for him" the latter is usually followed by some story of a business deal they had with him that went bad because Shuler either screw'd them over of attempted to.

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