"Fab forum" : Thinking Out Loud : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina

Fab forum

Even to the most rabid political junkie, campaign forums rarely are entertaining.

But Tuesday night's at-large forum at UNCG's Weatherspoon Art Gallery was about as engaging and informative as they come.

In fact, in this humble journalist's opinion, Temple Emanuel has been unseated as the champ of local election forums. At least for now.

Tuesday night's forum, planned and staged by local bloggers and moderated by one of their own, Michael Christopher, was clever and creative.

It also was wide-ranging and unpredictable, covering racial inequities, the Greensboro Coliseum, a proposed living-wage ordinance, Truth and Reconciliation, PAC contributions, domestic partner benefits and police morale, among other issues. Its format included a "lightning round" of fast-paced questions that quizzed Greensboro City Council candidates on topics such as the population of Greensboro and the city the tax rate -- and whether any of them aspire to run for mayor one day.

For the record, Florence Gatten and Yvonne Johnson do. As for Don Vaughan: "Hell no!"

One thing is certain: The candidates got a workout. More than once during the 16-question "Jump-in Round" (one of a total of four rounds)the candidates asked, "How many more questons are left?"

When asked at one point if they needed a break, challenger Diane Davis replied, no. "Let's get this over with."

Posted by Allen Johnson on September 27, 2005 11:24 PM | Permalink

Comments (7)

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Seymour Hardy Floyd said:

Allen,

Thanks for coming tonight.

And I appreciate your positive comments about the forum.

You never know exactly how something like that will go until you actually witness it.

Michael Christopher was super as the moderator. I just met him last Wednesday for the first time. Other bloggers suggested that he serve as our moderator, and it was clear tonight what a great choice he was.

Roch Smith, Jr. deserves credit for the forum's format. As a former Greensboro mayoral candidate himself, he has tremendous insight. It was a pleasure working with him to set up the forum; I learned a great deal from him in the process.

Based on the interactions I've had with the eight at-large candidates during the preparations for the forum, I have the utmost respect and appreciation for each of them.

If they are not genuninely good and decent individuals, they have fooled me well.

I would not be upset to see any three of them win. (That is certainly not true in all races!)

I only had a couple regrets about the forum.

I was happy to see all the people who attended, but I would have loved to have seen even more people.

If we do this again in the future, one of my goals will be to focus on creative ways to get more people to attend.

Another regret is that I did not have the opportunity at least to say "hello" to you.

As a big fan of your writing and as someone who still remembers and appreciates your efforts on behalf of a teacher who needed and benefited from your strong support,I hope someday to meet you in person.

Look forward to reading your views on these candidates, as well as the district candidates. (I hated that they scheduled the forum for district 1 and 2 candidates on the same night. Hope it went well and was well-attended--just wish our two forums had been held on different dates.)

Sincerely,

Hardy

Posted on September 28, 2005 12:28 AM

Allen Johnson said:

Hardy, I tried to find you after the forum but you were gone. It'd be a pleasure to meet you in person for the first time, even though I consider you an old friend.
As I mentioned to Roch and Michael, you guys did an excellent job tonight.

Posted on September 28, 2005 12:46 AM

Sue said:

I'm particularly proud of Hardy; this forum was his baby -- his idea -- and he saw it through. It was well-planned and different (from other forum styles). Hardy, with his penchant for details that I admire, didn't have to work hard during the program and that's a sign of great organization.

Glad to see you and Matt there, Allen. I think I saw you smile a couple of times, proving, once again, that sometimes things *can* be funny and we can laugh without being castigated in print of whatever (new or old) media.

I mentioned to Roch last night that since I've been involved in blogging, I've been much more interested in local politics. I was pleased that all the at-large candidates attended (the bloggers believed that we're so cross-city and cross-county that the at-largers were more representative of all of us) and hope that next year we can do this is a similarly well-executed and well-planned event.

I learned some new things about the candidates and figured out who I'll vote for in the at-large group. A forum worth attending.

Posted on September 28, 2005 7:49 AM

Roch101 said:

Coming from a grizzled veteran, that's quite a compliment, Allen. Thank you; and thanks for coming.

Posted on September 28, 2005 10:40 AM

truth said:

Hate I missed it. I didn't hear anything about it until now. I'm sure the info was out there but I didn't see it.

Perhaps that's why attendance wasn't higher. Then again, these things are (unfortunately) usually not heavily attended.

Posted on September 28, 2005 1:32 PM

Michael Christopher said:

Not enough praise could be heaped on Hardy to equal the hard work and thought that he put into the design of the evening. He did a marvelous job. My personal thanks also go to Roch and 101 for their sponsorship of the event. Next time I hope the N&R can get better behind it and help us get more people out. Allen, it was a gas finally meeting you. I hope we can sit down sometime and talk through some of these issues we discuss online.

Posted on September 29, 2005 12:16 AM

bbn said:

Posted on August 2, 2006 9:51 AM

Due to recent automated spamming attacks on our blogs, we are temporarily requiring commenters to authenticate themselves via TypeKey® before posting comments to any News & Record blog in order to prevent denials of service. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

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