VFW Post 3217-Mortem

Ralph Malph: I still got it.

—Happy Days, (numerous episodes, 1974-1984)

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The turnout for tonight's Candidate Forum was pretty good. I don't know if it was specifically better than last night's, which I heard was rather poor, but there were a bunch of people who I don't usually see at a Morrell Park Community Meeting, and they weren't wearing campaign T-shirts.

The candidate turnout was rather poor overall. We had all three of the challengers for the 10th District seat come, but not the incumbent. And Michael Sarbanes was the only one from the City Council President race to show up, which worked out well for him in the end.

There was a one-hour meet-and-greet before the forum, during which I was kind of sweating the attendance. During that hour, however, a bunch of bodies came into the VFW hall. At 7:40 by the VFW's clock (which runs 10 minutes fast so the bar closes on time), we got started.

A bunch of people had submitted questions, which I managed to sort into a few general categories, and I asked the candidates the questions. This prevented the forum from turning into a session of playing "Gotcha" and also kept the questions themselves from getting too inflammatory. One in particular I had to edit heavily before it could be asked. So often at these things you get that one guy who has that whole "Hey you kids get off my lawn" attitude and it takes him fifteen minutes to get to the point where the question—if there is one somewhere in all the ranting—is asked.  So we eliminated that. I went through a rotation system of letting different candidates go first, and they all acquitted themselves pretty well. When they were through, I let Sarbanes go for about 20 minutes and then he took a few questions directly from the floor, one of which was a woman who acted like she'd just seen god and was newly converted, and another one was a "Hey you kids" guy.

It's weird, but when I'm doing something like that I'm often a conduit and not really concentrating on the content of what's going on; I'm just worried about whether the sound is good, whether everyone can be heard, whether I'm speaking clearly, whether I can read the next card, that sort of thing. In the end, I wound up not really remembering much of what was said.

I went through that a lot in my Radio Days back in college: I'd prepare a news broadcast, read the thing and not have much idea of what I'd said. Or, I'd run the board for another person's show and afterward have no idea what they'd discussed. So at the end of this evening I wasn't too surprised that I had to listen to other people's assessments of the forum.

In the end, the people with whom I spoke were pretty impressed with Michael Sarbanes, so he may have won a few important converts tonight. But the big winner, based on the chatter I heard, was Terry Hickey.

Nobody had anything bad to say about the other candidates; they agreed that everyone sounded earnest and honest and dedicated etc., but apparently Hickey's got his message down and they liked what they heard. They couldn't put their finger on what didn't come through on Pruette's part, perhaps a lack of experience with the community-type stuff. And Fair, to some, came off as though he didn't really know what he was saying, as though his ideas weren't necessarily based in reality.

When you hear comments like that, you wish you paid better attention. The only answer I really paid attention to was the one where someone asked him about a recent article in the Baltimore Sun in which it's stated that Fair isn't in it to win; he was there to offer an alternative. He said something about having been misquoted and taken out of context; that the alternative was to Hickey and Pruette. I don't know if I'm buying it. Also, after the forum he told me that he hadn't seen the article at all. I don't know if I'm buying that, either. I know his campaign manager saw it because she and I traded a few emails about it.

So anyway, everyone did a pretty good job, and I'm going to take the time to thank the folks at Bakery Express for supplying the doughnuts, to Dunkin' Donuts on Washington Blvd. for the coffee, to the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland for lending us microphones and cables, and to the VFW, Post 3217 for providing the venue.

And I'm also going to thank the several people who said nice things about the job I did moderating. So, thanks! It was a nice touch to my week.