Debate agreement reported
WASHINGTON —The campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have tentatively settled on a package of three face-to-face debates that both sides view as a potentially decisive chance to sway huge audiences ahead of the Nov. 2 election, Democrats and Republicans said Sunday.
Bush’s campaign, which opened the week-long negotiations by urging just two sessions involving Bush and Kerry, yielded to the full slate of debates that had been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to people in both parties who were briefed on the negotiations.
No agreement will be final until the two sides agree on details for the format of a town-meeting-style debate that Bush at first resisted but now is willing to endorse.
The debates will be spread over two weeks just before the hectic home stretch of a bitter contest that had been tied for months until Bush recently opened a small lead in a number of national polls. The nominees will focus on foreign policy during the opening session, Sept. 30 in Florida; will take questions from undecided voters at the town-meeting-style debate Oct. 8 in Missouri; and will conclude with a session Oct. 13 in Arizona that will revolve around domestic issues.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) will debate Oct. 5 in Ohio. Each of the four debates will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time and will run 90 minutes.
The officials, who declined to be identified because they were not supposed to be discussing the matter with reporters, would not say when an agreement will be announced.
Both campaigns refused to comment on the state of negotiations. Bush-Cheney communications director Nicolle Devenish said: “The campaign maintains its position that it will not negotiate the terms of the debates in the press.”
Kerry’s campaign sees the debates as especially important, coming after a period in which he has been put on the defensive by the Bush campaign and its conservative allies. Polls paint a confusing picture of the state of the race, with some showing a virtual dead heat and others giving Bush a clear advantage. In many of the key battleground states, Bush appears in stronger shape than his challenger.
Bush’s chief negotiator, former Secretary of State James Baker, agreed to three debates in part because of Missouri’s importance as a swing state and because the president did not want to be portrayed as ducking his challenger, according to a source.
Under the commission’s proposal, the participants for the town meeting will be undecided voters from the St. Louis metropolitan area who are chosen by the Gallup Organization.
A Democratic official involved in the process said the Kerry campaign worked to bring pressure on the Bush campaign through the news media, Republican donors and public officials in Missouri to go through with the town-hall debate. Bush won the state by three points in 2000 and both sides had expected it to be among the most closely contested swing states, although a number of polls show Bush ahead there now.
After reaching agreement on the broad outlines of the schedule, Baker and Kerry’s lead negotiator, Vernon Jordan, were negotiating details of the town meeting over the weekend.