What’s a candidate forum like?

There are a few different kinds of events in politics where voters get to see their options in action.

At the presidential level, it’s just debates. Highly scripted, highly anticipated, and viewed through the lens of a performance.

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At the state representative level, as I’ve found, debates often are a minor part in comparison to events where all the candidates are present and asked questions in turn by a host organization. These candidate forums are more like a panel discussion, except where all the panellists are going for the same job.

Last week, I had my first one of these. It was hosted by the Tufts University College Democrats on a Tuesday night at 7:20 pm. Here’s what it is actually like to be a candidate at one of these forums.

Before the forum

For presidential debates, most candidates go into a kind of boot camp process. They hire people to play their opponents - for Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, it was Philippe Reines, who was described as taking a method approach to it - and they rehearse lines and angles to exploit.

For a state rep campaign, especially for an event where any question was possible and no real rehearsal was going to help, I instead spent most of the day collecting signatures.

Then I picked up my four-year-old from daycare, then gave him dinner and a bath, and then brought him to my wife. She’s a doctor and was working late but she happens to work near Tufts. So while my son settled into watching Daniel Tiger and my wife filled in notes for her patients, I walked up the steep hill to Tufts and arrived just as the State Senate forum was happening.

There are five Senate campaigns in my district. Four candidates were present and one was represented by a surrogate. The moderator asked a question and then each candidate/surrogate answered in turn.

I sat in the audience and listened, and pretty quickly I found myself thinking that these might be the same questions they asked us. So while I did not sit there and fully scripted out my responses, I did start to think of some of the points that I could make for each question, just in case they were the same.

After the Senate forum wrapped, there was a short break with pizza, photos, and a chance to reset. Then it was our turn.

Candidates and surrogates for two State Rep seats and a State Senate race

During the forum

For the state representative forum, the three candidates sat next to each other in chairs at the front of a classroom, with the audience of students and a few of the Senate candidates at the desks in front of us.

We each gave a minute and a half introduction. I decided to veer a little different than in the 2 minute introductions I gave at the city caucuses. Rather than too much of a biography, I focused on what I saw was the core problem on a meta-level in Massachusetts: a lack of competitiveness in the legislature, which leads to a lack of urgency.

It wasn’t the cleanest introduction I’ve ever given. Compared to prepared speeches, it felt compressed and didn’t hit all the policy areas. But I figured that with follow-up questions coming, I’d have a chance to talk about those later.

With intros wrapped, then came the questions.

The format was like a fantasy football snake draft. Sitting on the end, I spoke third for the first question, first for the second, and so on.

The questions themselves were strong and well-crafted. But answering complex policy questions in 45 seconds is harder than I anticipated. I’m much more used to teaching three-hour long classes where the goal is to fill the time with as much nuance as possible, than this format.

That constraint forced a different approach. Knowing the audience was college students interested in politics, I tried to focus on substance and, given the time, stress on the single most important point of the issue, rather than trying to list all of the different subtopics and keywords that I could think of.

Here’s my answer to a question on how to solve the problem of housing affordability:

After what felt like a much shorter time than what it probably was, we were done and I was off home to help with bedtime routine.

Value of the forum

Overall, I’d rate my performance a 4 out of 10. I need a lot of work to get more concise and comfortable with sub-minute answers. I spoke a bit too fast, with too many “ums,” and I kept looking at the moderator to see if I was about to get the buzzer.

However, I can’t be too hard on myself, because the next day, I was honored to receive the endorsement from the group. Even if I could make my answers more fluent, I’m glad that they appreciated my general focus on policy substance.

And to me, that’s the important lesson from the evening.

Voters, especially highly engaged voters like those who attend a candidate forum on a blustery Tuesday evening, deserve to be treated with intellectual respect.

Jargon and stock phrases may work on a flyer where you can’t fit a full sentence. But when people take the time to ask thoughtful questions, I will do my best to meet them with thoughtful answers.

I won’t have time to include every bit of nuance and complexity, but I can provide a core point I want people to remember about my vision for the state.

What’s best to me about these forums is that voters hear candidates side by side. Every election is a choice (or should be, if we had more competitive ones), and this format helps voters make a well-informed decision without the need to attend three separate events.

I was glad to be part of it, and I’m grateful to the Tufts students for putting together a thoughtful, efficient event. Can’t wait for the next one.