Three U.S. Senate candidates are protesting their exclusion from a League of Women Voters debate to be televised tonight.
The League is refusing to change its criteria for participation in what will be the only televised debate.
Maryland Public Television, along with WBAL-TV, is set to broadcast a live debate at 7 p.m. tonight sponsored by the League between Rep. Ben Cardin and former congressman Kweisi Mfume, the two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination.
Candidates Allan Lichtman, Joshua Rales and Dennis Rasmussen say they are being unfairly kept out because the League only included candidates who had received at least 15 percent support in polls taken before July 1.
All three have raised money and mounted serious campaigns, but none has gone above single digits in opinion surveys.
“They essentially sanctioned two candidates,” said Rasmussen, the former Baltimore County executive. Rasmussen joined the other two outside the League?s office in Annapolis.
The three candidates “all have distinctive views,” and voters “are just starting to take a look,” he said. “Do we want to depend on a political elite” to determine who should be heard? Rales asked, or “do we want to open up the process to new voices?”
Rales is a Montgomery County businessman who has never run for office before, but is spending more than $5 million of his own money on the race.
Lichtman, who started the protest two weeks ago, said that under the league?s criteria many successful Maryland candidates and majorpresidential candidates, especially women, would be kept out of debates.
Lu Pierson, president of the state League, said, “We have decided not to change the criteria.”
The 15 percent cutoff was approved by the League board last October, when it realized it was possible there would be many candidates for the open seat left by the retirement of Sen. Paul Sarbanes.
“[We did] it so far in advance” so that the League?s political motivations would not be questioned, Pierson said.
“It?s a difficult decision” but “we offer many other opportunities for candidates getting their word out.”
