What’s one gubernatorial forum among more than 30?
That’s the thinking of Republican candidate Paul LePage, who decided late Wednesday to withdraw from a live televised debate scheduled for Thursday night at Bates College in Lewiston.
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The debate, hosted by the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, will still be broadcast live on TV, radio and the Web at 8 p.m. with the four other candidates — Democrat Libby Mitchell, and independents Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott. It’s the second-to-last debate scheduled before the Nov. 2 election.
LePage campaign spokesman Dan Demeritt said this evening — just before the start of a debate LePage was attending in Bangor — that the late withdrawal from the debate is so that he can meet with voters instead as part of the candidate’s “People Before Politics” initiative.
“We’ve done 29 of these events so far, and the MPBN one would have been the 30th,” Demeritt said. “We looked at the schedule and made a strategic decision. We’d rather take advantage of campaign opportunities; it will be retail politicking.”
Demeritt said LePage planned to make stops in Newport and Millinocket in the late afternoon Thursday. Then, LePage would conduct radio interviews early Friday morning, he said.
Demeritt said LePage still plans to attend the final debate, scheduled for Saturday in Portland, sponsored by WGME-TV and MaineToday Media.
Keith Shortall, MPBN’s news director, said in a statement that the LePage campaign notified him of LePage’s withdrawal from the debate at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Shortall said he was disappointed, but said the debate would continue.
Not surprisingly, the campaigns of LePage’s top opponents — Mitchell and Cutler — were critical of the decision.
“It is unfortunate that LePage continues to skip debates,” said David Loughran, spokesman for the Mitchell campaign. “Voters deserve the opportunity to compare Libby’s plans … with LePage’s plans.”
Ted O’Meara, Cutler’s campaign manager, called LePage’s decision “mystifying” and “a complete insult to the people of Maine” because it’s “a very important debate.”
“It’s one of the last official debates of this campaign, the only one broadcast on TV statewide, and the people of Maine deserve to see the candidates,” O’Meara said. “It begs the question: what is Paul LePage afraid of? The other candidates, including Paul, agreed to this debate many months ago. This is part of the process; this is what you sign up for.”
But skipping debates is nothing new to the gubernatorial race. During the summer, LePage bowed out of several, as did Mitchell, who refused to debate Cutler and LePage at forums unless Moody and Scott were also invited.
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