Will McGrath and McConnell debate before election? It may depend on the moderator.
The opportunity to see U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and his Democratic challenger Amy McGrath square off in a debate before the November election now hinges on one factor: whether a debate hosted by Gray TV will have a female moderator.
In a press release Monday, the McGrath campaign accused McConnell of refusing to participate in debates with female moderators and said they would participate in the Gray TV debate “once the gender balance of the moderators is restored.”
“Amy is ready and willing to debate Mitch, but Mitch is afraid to take the stage unless he dictates every detail,” said Courtney Daniel, McGrath’s communications director. “We want to have a debate that includes representation that reflects our electorate, and we won’t let him railroad us on that.”
The McGrath campaign says McConnell has not debated with a female moderator in 25 years. While McConnell has not formally declined the invitation to the KET debate, which is hosted by Renee Shaw, his campaign indicated Monday that it would only accept the Gray TV debate (Gray owns WKYT in Lexington and WAVE in Louisville, as well as affiliates in Hazard, Bowling Green, Paducah, Cincinnati, Evansville, Charleston W.Va. and Knoxville TN).
That debate is slated to be hosted by WKYT’s Bill Bryant.
Kate Cooksey, McConnell’s spokeswoman, said McConnell “received an invitation, accepted it, and stands ready to debate on October 12.”
“After spending two months attempting to add another man to the debate stage Amy McGrath absurdly suggests gender discrimination by UK and Gray TV as the primary reason she can’t appear,” Cooksey said. “We sincerely hope Amy McGrath finds a reason to accept the debate rather than an evolving grab bag of laughably ridiculous excuses why she cannot.”
Robert Thomas, the news director at WKYT, would not say if they were open to changing moderators.
“We outline for both campaigns how the debate would be moderated and planned,” Thomas said. “And we still hope that the McGrath campaign will accept our latest invitation.”
The McGrath campaign accepted invitations to three debates: One hosted by WDRB in Louisville, one hosted by KET and one hosted by the University of Kentucky student government.
The McConnell campaign agreed to two debates: one hosted by the Kentucky Farm Bureau and one hosted by Gray TV.
The “student government debate” McGrath agreed to was merged with the University of Kentucky’s partnership with Gray TV. Jay Blanton, the spokesman for the University of Kentucky, said that when the student government partnered with Gray, “a collective decision was made to set a threshold for entry into the debate of 10 percent in the polls at the time the invitations were made.”
McGrath has not formally accepted the invitation to the Gray TV debate.
That leaves Gray TV as the only debate in which both candidates have tentatively agreed to participate.
McGrath’s original participation in a debate predicated upon whether or not the Libertarian candidate, Brad Barron, would appear on stage. Barron was invited to both the WDRB and KET debates.
McConnell’s campaign, however, refused to participate in a debate where Barron is on-stage.
While the student government had reached out to Barron via email to include him in the debate, by the time the Gray TV and University of Kentucky debate invitation was sent, it only went to McConnell and McGrath.
Barron Monday said he considered the fact that he was not formally invited as a “form of voter suppression,” calling the situation “ridiculous.”
“To me, it’s a simple case of Mitch McConnell trying to avoid debating me,” Barron said.
While McGrath appears to have loosened up on her willingness to debate without Barron, there was an additional change: according to an initial letter sent out to the campaigns, the debate would be hosted by WAVE’s Shannon Cogan and WKYT’s Bill Bryant. By the time a second letter inviting both campaigns to the debate was sent out September 16, only Bryant was moderating.
When McGrath’s campaign raised questions about why Cogan was dropped, they were informed that it was because both campaigns had mentioned Bryant as a potential moderator, according to emails shown to the Herald-Leader.
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 5:24 PM.
