Richard Alarcon----James Hahn----Robert Hertzberg----Bernard Parks----Antonio Villaraigosa

On December 2, 2004, at 6:00 pm, Pacific Standard Time, five candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles in the March 8, 2005, municipal election will meet in a face-to-face debate. This campaign encounter will take place at the Museum of Tolerance, on Pico Boulevard near the studios of 20th Century Fox and the Hillcrest Country Club.

Moderating this debate will be Colleen Williams, an anchorperson at KNBC-TV, which will be originating the live broadcast of the debate.

Questioning the candidates will be the moderator, Ms. Williams, along with Jose Ronstadt, a news anchor at KWHY-TV 22 (a Telemundo/NBC station) and Ron Kaye, managing editor at the Los Angeles Daily News.

The "title" sponsor of this event is Barrington Associates—Investment Bankers. Also involved as sponsors are the accounting firm Good Swartz Brown & Berns LLP and the collection and recycling company Waste Management, Inc. In exchange for underwriting the expenses associated with the debate, the sponsors will be allotted most of the tickets allowing guests to observe the debate relatively-up-close-and-personally from seats in the auditorium at the Museum of Tolerance.

The League of Women Voters of Los Angeles (LWVLA) is contributing the criteria for determining which mayoral candidates are included in the debate.

The LWVLA is also providing the basic ground rules according to which the debate will be conducted and the referees who will make sure that the candidates remain within their allotted time limits when making their statements and answering the questions asked by the reporters. For their efforts, the League will be able to invite 30 special guests, constituting 10% of the room's total capacity, to watch the debate in person.

Ms. Julie Rajan, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, spoke this afternoon with California Politics Today about the involvement of her organization in this political event. You can hear what she had to say by clicking here.

Overall responsibility for organizing this debate belongs to the California State Forum, a 501(c)(3) non-profit group organized to foster dialogue between and among politicians and the public. The group was founded and is currently helmed by advertising executive Scott Regberg, who spoke this afternoon with California Politics Today, providing valuable guidance for anyone wanting to know what lies behind what he or she will see on their television screen on December 2nd, when, thanks to the effort of all those mentioned here, voters in the City of Los Angeles will have a chance to see and hear the voices of five men who would be Mayor.

You can hear what he said by clicking here.

On the question of who is entitled to participate in the debate, LWVLA executive director Rajan told California Politics Today that while she is not sure if it is the California State Forum that has the responsibility of deciding who is to be included and who isn't, "it certainly is not the League" that has that role.

While the very last sentence of the League's eligibility criteria says that "LWVLA will be the final arbiter" of whether or not a particular individual is "a significant candidate for the office of Mayor" under its criteria and therefore entitled to participate in the debate, Ms. Rajan indicated in a subsequent, unrecorded interview with California Politics Today that this is a general provision of the League's criteria and that, in this case, as she is quoted as saying above, "it certainly is not the League" that has the ultimate authority to decide who will or will not be allowed to participate in the mayoral debate.

Also in that later conversation, Ms. Rajan acknowledged that the provision in the League's criteria requiring that "[t]he candidate show[s] evidence of public support by receiving 5% public recognition in a major, reliable, nonpartisan public opinion polls which shows all the candidates," the phrase "receiving 5% public recognition" might not be sufficiently clear in distinguishing between "name recognition" and "support" and that it might be necessary at some point to clarify that statement. The wording is not precise, either, on the issue of whether a potential debate participant needs to show that level of (either) name recognition or support in only one such opinion poll or needs to demonstrate it in some overall aggregation of multiple polls and/or all the polls recognized as legitimate under the League's criteria.

Given the precedent of the rather strenuous, but ultimately-futile, efforts of a third-party candidate to be included in this year's U.S. Senate debate between Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, which was held in the same Museum of Tolerance auditorium where the Los Angeles Mayoral Debate will be held on December 2nd, it might be useful to elucidate these points sooner rather than later.

Following the formal, one-hour debate, each of the candidates is scheduled to participate in a "press availability" event backstage at the Museum of Tolerance. According to a well-placed source, the order of appearance of the candidates in these separate "post-Oscar®"-like mini-press conferences, which was determined using the age-old "drawing of straws" procedure, conducted by the candidates or their representatives, will be as follows: Robert Hertzberg, Richard Alarcon, Antonio Villaraigosa, Bernard Parks, and James Hahn.

To visit the official campaign web sites of any of the four out of five mayoral debate candidates who has one as of today, click on the name of the candidate under his photo below.