As crushed as many readers and podcast listeners may be to learn this, Chuck Monster of VegasTripping.Com cannot actually run for mayor of Las Vegas. That's a shame, too, given his fully formed, almost doable plan to save Vegas, which takes about five minutes to hear on this excerpt from our show.That said, it's not as though the actual candidates aren't fun or interesting. In the left corner is Chris Giunchigliani, county commissioner and undefeated politico who scraped into the finale by a mere 15 votes. In the slightly-more-rightish corner is Carolyn Goodman, the frontrunner who readily admits she intends to not only capitalize on her husband's wild popularity but also is focused largely on seeing his plans through.
On Wednesday, the two candidates are scheduled to appear for a forum before the Lambda Business and Professional Association, Vegas' gay chamber of commerce. The event is at Las Palmas restaurant in Commercial Center, 953 E. Sahara, costs $15 for lunch and is open to all. It's also historic: It's the first time in Las Vegas history the candidates for mayor are appearing together before a GLBT audience.
Oh, and I'm the moderator/interviewer/host/medium/whatever. We tried to get the candidates to appear for a one-on-one debate but, as Delen Goldberg wrote in yesterday's Las Vegas Sun, one party didn't want to do it that way. Still, we decided it was worthwhile to have them both in whichever format we could, and I'll be there to make sure the candidates' feet are held to the fire.
While the audience will be largely GLBT people, I can assure you the line of questioning will not solely encompass that area by any stretch of the imagination. Last fall, when I moderated a proxy debate for Lambda between State Sen. Steven Horsford (standing in for Harry Reid) and UNLV College Republicans dude Mark Ciavoli (for Sharron Angle), the discussion was at least 75% about the economic issues of the day.
If you have questions for one or both of the mayoral candidates, please email them to me at Steve(at)SteveFriess.Com or leave it on a voicemail at 702-997-3300.
I'm going to see if we can stream the thing live via UStream. I really depends on the lighting; when I streamed the Celine Dion stuff last month it was actually difficult to see her because of the poor quality of the built-in camera on my Mac and iPhone. I'll test that out on Wednesday, so stay tuned.
2 comments:
"when I moderated a proxy debate for Lambda between State Sen. Steven Horsford (standing in for Harry Reid) and UNLV College Republicans dude Mark Ciavoli (for Sharron Angle), the discussion was at least 75% about the economic issues of the day."
Because Mark refused to debate LGBTQ issues and you let him get away with it.
Ummm, no, because the questions were opened to the floor -- which is what you seem to want for this go-around despite the guarantee that such a format would lead to huge amounts of wasted time. But we focused on economics because that was the dominant topic the attendees, who unlike you are not political activists but people with businesses, wanted to ask. It also was the most important topic for all voters, so it's no surprise that GLBT people would have similar priorities.
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