Senate Candidate Forum Today at 11:15—How to Prepare?

The Aberdeen League of Women Voters and Chamber of Commerce are hosting our second candidate forum today. Unlike the August forum hosted by LEAD, today’s show at the K.O. Lee Public Library will feature Legislative and county candidates… meaning this show will take a while. All eleven candidates for State House in Districts 1, 2, and 3 (all of which gerrymander their way across Brown County) will be invited to the podium at 9:15 to make three-minute “Who Am I and What Am I Doing Here?” remarks, then offer one-minute answers to written questions from the audience, then deliver one-minute “Vote for Me!” closers. The four candidates for Senate in Districts 2 and 3 (including me!) get the same treatment at 11:15, followed by our six Brown County Commission candidates at 1:15 and two county auditor candidates at 2:45.

We’re taking ten-minute breaks between each segment, plus a 55-minute lunch break. That means the League and Chamber have allotted different amounts of time per candidate per race and different numbers of questions the candidates might feasibly field:

Race	minutes per	feasible questions
House	10:00	5
Senate	16:15	10
Commission	13:20	7
Auditor	17:30	10

My question-calc is based on the assumption that all candidates will act rationally and use every second available to make their pitch. Public forums in this town are rare opportunities; giving up any precious second offered to explain one’s position and educate the public is irresponsible. Besides, if a basketball game runs 48 minutes, do you only shoot for 24 and then step off the court?

Part of getting ready for a public forum like this is working through numbers like these and thinking through how much time we really have available to get useful, instructive messages across to the voters (you know, the 15 or 20 usual partisan suspects who always come to events like these, the handful of undecideds who might spend their Saturday with us candidates, and a smattering of neighbors who will happen upon the video on local cable until November 6). Forum prep also involves just knowing the schedule and format so we’re not distracted by figuring out the rules when we get there and can concentrate on listening to the questions and speaking to the public.

The more important part of getting ready for a public-speaking event like today’s forum is composing and practicing the opening and closing remarks. Choosing those remarks involves some decisions:

• Do I follow the League/Chamber recommendation that I open by saying why I’m running, identifying the most pressing problem facing the Legislature, and proposing solutions thereto?
• Do I ignore that recommendation and open with pure happy biography?
• Do I expand and lay out three big Legislative issues (education, voter rights, equal justice and opportunity?) to distinguish myself from my opponent?
• Do I find a creative and memorable way to do all three, showing how my desire to run for Senate, the issues that fire me up, and the solutions I propose all flow naturally from my experience as a teacher, a technologist, a blogger, a bicyclist, a husband, a dad, and a dog owner? (Seven biography points, three policy points, critique of current leadership, and plans to solve, in three minutes? Watch me.)
• Do I talk solely about myself and my positions, or do I explicitly compare my opponent’s statements and positions to mine?

I’ve practiced at least three versions of my opening, combining the above possible elements in different ways. With four hours to go, I still haven’t decided. I haven’t reduced my uncertainty completely, but I have options available and can choose the option that fits best with the moment, the audience… and whether the League and Chamber tap me to go first or whether I follow other candidates and might want to tune my response to build on or fire at comments by my fellow candidates.

My closing is more uncertain. One can compose a prepared closer, as Al Novstrup did at the 2016 forum, to ensure that, no matter what questions come up, one gets to leave the audience with some tested talking points or, as Al clearly intended last time, to fire off a rehearsed negative attack after everyone else has spoken and thus when there’s no chance for follow-up.

Such scripted closers can sound spectacular. However, like Al’s in 2016, they can also sound canned and disjointed from the rest of the forum. I have closing remarks ready, but I also recognize that our final minutes today are an opportunity to sum up what’s been said, to put everyone’s questions and answers in context, and, as may be necessary with Al Novstrup on the stage, to correct errors, refute lies, and call out egregious racism. A good candidate has to have a plan (and a back-up plan), but, like Eisenhower, and von Moltke, a good candidate has to be ready to change that plan upon contact with the enemy… or the opponents… or the public… or reality.

The greatest uncertainty in a public forum is the questions. We can be fairly certain that some issues will come up, like education. But on that issue alone, will folks ask about K-12, public pre-school, private school vouchers, the Board of Regents, or the vo-techs? Or will we get five questions in a row on different aspects of education? Will it be all bread-and-butter policy issues—property tax, ag assessment, jail populations, non-meandered waters—or will we get stuck in a whirlpool of culture-war questions—guns, fetuses, potty panic? Will Al Novstrup’s racist friends finally show up and try to make the program all about immigration and Sharia law? Will we get hyperlocal questions (dredging Moccasin Creek? expanding recycling? building a third railroad overpass on Roosevelt so the new AGP soybean plant doesn’t bring traffic to a halt with all of its trains?) that may not be entirely within the Legislature’s power to solve?

How does one prepare for such an unpredictable range of topics? Again, I’m looking back at the timeframe, and we could get ten questions, maybe more if a candidate doesn’t show up or passes on a question. That’s ten opportunities to be caught by surprise, to be thrown a curveball, to not know what to say.

The only way to reduce that uncertainty (and I can’t say it enough times: improving your public speaking hinges on reducing uncertainty) is to read, study, and practice. For Legislative candidates, that means reading Bob Mercer, Dana Ferguson, Todd Epp, and Kevin Woster. Shut off national cable news and watch Statehouse during Session. Shut off national talk radio and listen to Lori Walsh and Lee Strubinger on public radio.

And maybe, if you have time, spend thirteen years writing over 15,000 blog posts about South Dakota politics. All those blog posts may provide your opponents with easy opposition research, but they also have helped me gain historical perspective on how the Legislature works (or doesn’t). Those blog posts have also engaged me in conversations with lots of other interested South Dakotans who have helped me learn even more about state government and have accustomed me to dealing with unexpected questions and arguments. I don’t know what questions I’ll be asked this morning at the forum, but there’s a good chance that I’ll have fielded questions like them before and have written blog posts and comments with relevant information that I can bring up in today’s forum.

I’ll walk into today’s forum with very few written notes. I won’t bring a full written script. But that doesn’t mean I’m winging it. One should not wing a candidate forum any more than the victorious candidates should wing public policy. Responsible candidates for public office, like any responsible public speaker, will read and study extensively. They will talk with others about big issues. They will speak and write to organize and test their own ideas. And they will walk into any public forum ready to respond intelligently and usefully to any relevant question you, the folks who are hiring us to do democracy right, want to ask.