In the lone scheduled Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate, moderator Alex Trebek announced right off the bat that he was going to try something different. Based on the reactions from politicians and pundits on both the left and the right, it appears that perhaps different wasn’t necessarily better.
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Citing a Watchdog.org report showing that Trebek dominated Monday night’s event, the campaign of Republican challenger Scott Wagner is calling for two more debates with Democratic incumbent Gov. Tom Wolf to offer voters a fuller airing of the issues at stake in the Nov. 6 election.
A Watchdog analysis found that Trebek did 41 percent of the talking, compared to just 32 percent for Wagner and 27 percent for Wolf.
“The people of Pennsylvania deserve to know that they have a choice when they go to the polls on November 6th, and last night’s debate did not profile enough of the serious problems that are facing Pennsylvania,” Wagner said in a news release Tuesday. “When Mr. Trebek stepped back and allowed Governor Wolf and me to have a substantive discussion of the issues, I felt it was very informative. That being said, a single 45 minute debate where the moderator spoke just as much as both candidates limited our chances to present our views on a number of topics.”
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In the aftermath of his primary victory in May, Wagner challenged Wolf to hold debates in each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, an offer that the Wolf campaign rejected as not serious. Ultimately, the governor only agreed to Monday’s event hosted by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry in Hershey, moderated by the longtime host of the game show Jeopardy.
Trebek revealed at the outset Monday evening that he had conditions for agreeing to host the debate.
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“I accepted on the condition that I would get to do it my way,” he said. “Now that doesn’t mean we’re going to have a Jeopardy type quiz up here. … I’m not a big fan of the traditional debate formats, where the candidates stand at a lectern, and the moderator asks a question, and the candidate has 90 seconds to respond and then the opponent has 30 seconds in rebuttal. I wanted to approach it very differently.”
While the end result was very much the “conversation” that Trebek had promised, rather than a traditional debate, the response was overwhelmingly negative.
“What is happening. Trebek is debating the audience,” wrote Max Steele, communications director for Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, on Twitter during the debate. “Trebek is debating both candidates and the audience. He is not moderating.”
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Criticism came from the other side of the political spectrum, as well.
“Wow,” wrote state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Canonsburg. “I didn’t know I was attending a debate between @realScottWagner and Alex Trebek.”
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“Alex Trebeck [sic] should run for the US Senate,” wrote Rep. Seth Grove, R-York. “His 20 minute ‘questions’ are very Senatorial.”
The Wolf campaign did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday from Watchdog.org after Wagner’s proposal for two more debates surfaced. But Wolf’s running mate, lieutenant governor candidate and the mayor of Braddock, John Fetterman, was dismissive of the suggestion, re-tweeting Wagner’s press release and simply adding: “u lost lol.”
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Wagner said that if Wolf declines, he’s prepared to show up at debate events alone.
“If Governor Wolf declines my offer, I’m willing to stand on the stage with a moderator and an empty chair next to me,” he said.
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