… and the winner (of the Gov debate) was —

Uh, not much of a debate. Both candidates sounding good, looking … well, Moore looked good, while Perdue looked either better or worse depending on what you make of her perpetual smile.

Issues? Not really, except for Perdue’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate that gave us the state lottery (as Lt. Gov, she only votes to break a tie). Moore called the lottery for what it is, “a fool’s game,” but he added that he knows his is a minority opinion and there’s going to be no repealing the lottery now. No repealing it, but no advertising it either, Moore promised. To which Perdue added a hasty “me, neither.”

As I look at my notes, they reinforce my general impression that Moore won on points, but maybe didn’t raise any single issue strongly enough to help him close what seems — from the polls — to be a +/- 8-pt Perdue lead going into the last two weeks of the primary campaign. Perdue got the better of the non-opening openings, but so filibustered it that she perhaps gave the advantage away right there. In any event, the moderators thereafter were determined to level the playing field time-wise, and Moore — with their help — dominated the next five questions in a row. The following three (on immigration) were a draw. Then the lottery issue was raised, and Moore won that one. The last three questions were also drawn, except that one of them — about whether Moore was hiding something re: pension investment returns — was an issue about which Perdue should’ve had something to say (she’s been pounding away at the subject in her ads), but apparently she didn’t dare.

One good question posed by the WRAL team was about where the candidates would get the money they’d need to fulfill their campaign promises. Perdue’s answer: a blue-ribbon commission would study state spending and find cuts, and she’d force the legislature to accept or reject its recommendations as a package. Moore’s response: finding cuts is the governor’s job, and the veto is how you enforce them. That’s one of the five answers I gave to Moore. Also the next one, when Moore successfully contrasted “doing” something with “talking about doing” something. And the next one, on how he’d pay for tuition cuts (with $$$ from the Golden Leaf Foundation, versus Perdue’s verbiage — and belated ditto on Golden Leaf). And the next one, on education, when Perdue vowed to do right by every element of the education system we’ve got, while Moore said successful organizations focus on a few things, not everything, and he’d focus on cutting the dropout rate.

Bottom line, though: Not much there for the Moore campaign to work with going forward, while Perdue managed to dispel the issue of her ducking debates.

This entry was posted from Bob Geary on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 7:10 pm and is filed under State Capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.