🚀 go-pugleaf

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Beating out sun-dappled Tempe, Arizona for a presidential debate in the
fall of 2008 may be a tough order for Portland, Oregon. But overcoming
Spokane, Washington? Maybe not so hard.

Or at least that's the thinking of Mark Kirchmeier, longtime Portland
political junkie, who is helping lead efforts to bring a presidential
debate to the Oregon Convention Center. The event would be jointly
hosted by the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission and Clark
College in Vancouver. Kirchmeier figures the city's odds have just gone
up now that Tempe has dropped out of the running and only two Western
venues remain.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is set to decide on four debate
sites sometime in October. At this point, 15 applicants are still in the
hunt. The winner will have to pay $4.5 million to the debate commission
to stage the event and Kirchmeier said the region will have to spend
another $2 to $3 million in associated costs. But he said that host
cities have found that the the positive economic impact will be several
multiples of that. 

The Portland-Vancouver application calls for the debate itself to be
held at the convention center and for a variety of ancillary events -
speeches, symposia, etc. - to be held across the river at Clark College.

Kirchmeier worked for the University of Portland when that school put in
an unsuccessful bid for a presidential debate in 2000. He said the
convention center seemed to be more of a hit with debate commission
officials than did UP's Chiles Center.

And then there's geography. Since the bipartisan debate commission began
sponsoring presidential debates in 1988, at least one Western debate has
been held in three of the five presidential election cycles. One
commission staffer, speaking on background, said the commission looks at
geographic diversity, but it's only one of several factors.

Kirchmeier said a local committee working on the debate is getting help
from former Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, who served with two former senators
on the commission, Alan Simpson of Wyoming and John Danforth of
Missouri. And Kirchmeier said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., is also helping
assure Republicans they don't have to worry about holding a debate in
Portland, despite the city's "Little Beirut" reputation for far-left
protests.

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