The New Hampshire Debate - Mike Gravel

Washington D.C. - June 6, 2007
Media & The Gravel Campaign
After watching Sunday night's Presidential debate, Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, plans to warn NBC about its September debate. "You're going to hear for sure that I'm going to discuss with them who's the moderator so it's certainly a much more fair and equal playing field than what we saw tonight," the Chairman said, referring to the shocking disparity in time afforded to the three candidates who have raised the most money, compared to the other candidates running for the Democratic nomination for President. "The mainstream media has gone underground in its attempt to edit the Gravel campaign" said Presidential candidate and former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, as evidenced by the June 3 debate in New Hampshire sponsored by CNN, the Hearst Corporation's WMUR-TV, and the New Hampshire Union Leader. During the two-hour, commercial-free debate, Senator Gravel was asked 10 somewhat irrelevant questions and then allowed only seconds to answer before being cut off by the moderator. In total, the Senator was afforded only five minutes and 37 seconds of time during the entire debate. The candidates with the most donations from corporate special interests were asked the serious questions, were allowed to speak at length, and were allowed time to respond to criticism. Adam D. Krauss, the Democrat staff writer for Foster's Online, a Dover, New Hampshire-based news site, echoed the contention that Gravel and others were being excluded by quoting Dean Spiliotes, director of research at Saint Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics, who said, "It was interesting how those three candidates were presented. I can't imagine that that was random, with Hillary and Edwards and Obama, and then Kucinich and Gravel out on the end." The placement of the candidates on the debate stage exacerbated the inequities of the time allowed to some candidates to respond to questions. For example, Senator Obama was given one full minute to answer each of 16 questions, while Senator Gravel was allowed only 30 seconds each to answer 10 questions. CNN's Wolf Blitzer and his producer appear to have selectively enforced time guidelines. "Prominent talk show host Arnie Arnesen labeled CNN the debate's 'loser' because it 'made a decision for the rest of us that they (Clinton, Obama and Edwards) were going to remain the top-tier' candidates," Krauss added. Despite the best efforts of CNN, WMUR-TV and the Union Leader to exclude Senator Gravel, his brief comments quickly became one of the most-watched videos on YouTube.com, which receives millions of hits each day. It also became one of the top-rated videos in news and politics. Senator Gravel, a resident of Virginia, is a former two-term U.S. Senator from Alaska with a distinguished record that includes successfully ending the military draft with a five-month filibuster. He also released The Pentagon Papers, risking both prosecution and jail; played the leading role in making the Alaska pipeline a reality; and ended nuclear weapons testing in the seabed off Alaska. He is the driving force and author of the National Initiative for Democracy, a proposal to allow Americans to participate in making laws at the federal level on issues that affect their lives though a federal ballot initiative process-already proven in many states as an effective and necessary check on unresponsive representative government.
Please Support Senator GravelWe refuse to give an inch to this kind of treatment. In fact, we would like to challenge you to help us overcome this by helping in two ways.1. Send this e-mail to as many friends and relatives as you can with a note why you think Senator Gravel's voice and ideas are so critical in this campaign. 2. Please make a donation to the campaign so we can continue to increase our use of the Internet and other sources to offset efforts to keep 'The People' from hearing his clarion call to 'Let The People Decide".
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Website: http://www.gravel08.us/
Alex Colvin
email: alex@gravel2008.us
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