Congressman Ron Barber and GOP challenger Martha McSally met in their only televised showdown last night as Arizona Public Media brought you a forum from the UA Student Union. The candidate discussed the future of Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, tax policy, education issues and more.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2012.
Barber is running on Gabby’s sympathy vote, besides he’s had his chance and failed. Keep turning over new blood that way the public won’t get screwed as much, we hope.
I attended Tuesday evening’s forum — as it was termed by the presenters, Associated Students of the UA and Arizona Public Media — and was met by a dark-suited ASUA representative as I was trying to figure out how to get from the passageway between the two wings of the building to the ballroom. He guided me to an elevator and gave directions from there. Another ASUA representative led me to the entrance to the ballroom and turned me over to yet a third, who acted as my usher. This event was extremely well organized, from the parking structure where event-goers were given a fixed price and a ticket to get them through the exit process, to the professionalism of Christopher Conover, Andrea Kelly, Jim Nintzel and Katy Murray, the moderator and questioners.
I wish the candidates had been as well prepared. Congressman Barber was a bit hesitant in the beginning but warmed to his task as the hour went on. As is the case with most candidates in most public forums, he tended to move from the question to the points he wanted to make, but for the most part stayed in the ballpark. Colonel McSally, in two very obvious instances, wanted nothing to do with the issue being offered to her. When Nintzel asked how, after repealing the Affordable Care Act, she would deal with insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, she spoke long and off key about Medicare issues. Pre-existing conditions and the refusal of insurance companies to cover people with such never came into her response, an extremely significant failure. A bit later Barber expressed his strong commitment to maintaining women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions without governmental interference and charged that McSally had responded to a candidate questionnaire from Arizona’s leading anti-choice organization with anti-choice answers. The self-described lifelong warrior for women’s rights did not respond to Congressman Barber. My sense is that Colonel McSally, who made several not terribly subtle references to ‘my neighbors’ and at least one to ‘my church’, is not ready to serve our community in the U.S. Congress.