We are very happy to announce that Larson Newspapers will be hosting a right proper debate between Sedona’s two mayoral candidates, Samaire Armstrong and Scott Jablow, the two candidates who emerged from the August primary having defeated the incumbent mayor and a third challenger.
We’ll be scheduling the formal debate in September, with specific details to come in the weeks ahead, at one of the theaters owned by the Sedona International Film Festival.
A limited number of members of the public will be invited to attend, with questions posed by myself, General Manager Kyle Larson and other moderators.
Local organizations often host biennial candidate forums, but this will be a formal debate in the classical sense. The debate will be live-streamed online for everyone to view.
At forums, candidates are generally given the questions ahead of time wherein they can formulate and pre-write their answers. Then at the forums themselves, they essentially just re-read aloud those pre-written answers or repeat what they’ve memorized to an static audience. There might be a few follow-up questions from moderators, or questions from the audience, but candidates are not really “debating the issues,” per se. Fundamentally, forums are no different than running a Q&A in our newspaper.
Instead, in this debate, we will pose questions to candidates that they have not seen in advance. We’ll give them some time to answer, and then encourage the back-and-forth debates between candidates on the issues that we ask or on the topics they themselves bring up during their answers.
After all, that’s how council meetings take place. Council members read up on issues and the agenda, but the discussion consists of council members arguing their points and trying to sway those on the fence to one vote or another.
With three months before election day and two candidates who were nearly tied heading to the general election, we have time to formulate good questions to pose to them to give voters insight into how they will lead which they both can then point voters to watch as we head to the polls. I and other Sedona residents have been hoping for years for such a format and we are very excited to be the organization to offer it.
Personally I come from a long line of speech and debate tradition. I started as a student at Dobson High School in Mesa while National Speech & Debate Association Hall of Fame coach Mel Olson was leading us to an unprecedented 15-year streak of speech and debate state championships. That culminated after college with being hired as a paid judge at forensics [aka competitive speech and debate] tournaments at both Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University.
The point being I appreciate and respect the format and look forward to co-moderating the debate between our candidates for voters. We are eager to formulate and ask thoughtful questions that will generate intelligent and meaningful answers based on real policies affecting residents rather than simply asking for canned responses on policy stances over which the individual candidates as officials will have no real impact.
Rather, we ask questions that will give voters an insight on how these candidates will lead when elected, how they will respond to challenges to Sedona’s way of life, and what persuasive methods and rhetorical tactics they may employ as mayor when trying to convince fellow council members to join them on a vote or when addressing county, state or congressional leaders about Sedona’s funding, support for major projects, acquiring grants, etc.
We sincerely thank both Armstrong and Jablow for agreeing to this form of debate and we know they eagerly look forward to being allowed to speak with our readers and voters about their ideas and policy goals.
We will lay out our guidelines for in-person attendance and how to watch it; we will livestream the event and archive it for later viewing. If successful, we may even do a second one sometime in October just as voters are getting their early ballots in the mail to give candidates one last chance to speak to voters on the issues before Election Day. Please join us.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
