After a tour of Austin’s auditoriums on Friday, organizers of the Oct.

Monday, September 11, 2000

After a tour of Austin’s auditoriums on Friday, organizers of the Oct. 15 U.S. Senate debate selected Riverland Community College’s Frank W. Bridges Theatre.

The debate – and two others in Duluth and Minneapolis – is being organized by Alan Beck of KMSP Channel 9 in Minneapolis and Liz Nordling of the Minnesota League of Women Voters. The pair were in Austin to choose a site for the debate, and are awaiting the primary results to invite the four candidates who will represent the four major parties in Minnesota – DFL, Republican, Constitution and Independence – to debate before the Nov. 7 election.

The debate will be broadcast live by KMSP from the Frank W. Bridges Theatre from 7 to 9 p.m. that Sunday evening. KMSP anchors Jeff Passolt and Robyne Robinson will act as panelists, moving among the audience to gather questions and filling in the gaps when needed. Although the format appears spontaneous, Nordling explained that the questions will be screened before the debate, so any audience members who would like to question the candidates will be invited to come early to submit their questions.

"We’ll choose the best representative question to avoid duplication," Nordling said. "Then by having the question written out it also helps ensure the person asking the question doesn’t have an attack of nerves and forget what he or she was going to say."

Nordling said the league always sponsors at least three debates in an election, with Minneapolis and Duluth being standard locations. The third location varies; two years ago, it was Brainerd. She explained that the Blandin Foundation, which donates money for the debates through the league’s education fund, asks that at least one debate be held in an outstate city with a population under 25,000. Austin was selected over several other smaller Minnesota cities – Willmar included – to host this year’s debate.

"We hope the focus in Austin will be on rural issues," Nordling said. "Health care, immigration – those are issues everywhere, although Austin will have its own slant on some of those issues. Housing, for example, is a problem everywhere, but in the Cities it’s a problem because it’s too expensive and in many of the smaller cities and towns it’s a problem because there simply isn’t enough."

A reception will be held after the debate, and all four candidates and audiences members will be invited to attend.

Nordling has a theory that the receptions may be more telling in the end than the debates.

"The candidates are always invited, how long they stay is up to them," the debate organizer said. "I should have seen it coming last time. After all the gubernatorial debates two years ago, Humphrey always left immediately, Coleman would stay 10 or 20 minutes and Jesse would hang around until the last people had gone because ‘there were voters there.’"