At 6:15 p.m., I received this statement from the Carty campaign in response to my post "No Debate Tonight":
This was not a unilateral decision. The Carty campaign proposed a debate two weeks ago with a proposed date, time and place, which Mr. Liberati-Conant's campaign agreed to. With respect to the claims regarding moderator and procedure I refer you directly to the emails attached below from Prof. Hutter and Neal Connolly who has negotiated the debate on Mr. Carty's behalf.
The Carty campaign was prepared to move forward tonight with or without Ryan's opponent. Although, we sincerely hoped Mr. Liberati-Conant would have participated. The voting public can only benefit from the opportunity to hear each candidate's points and counterpoints, side by side, in the rigorous yet formal structure only a candidate debate can provide.
It should be noted that nowhere in my post is any reference made to a "unilateral decision" but rather to a "unilateral announcement." The email from Michael J. Hutter referenced in the statement is reproduced below. It is clearly not responding to the Gossips post since the email was sent at 3:18 p.m., and the post was not published until 3:52 p.m.
The email from Neal Connolly, which recounts the entire sequence of events, asserts that the League of Women Voters of Rensselaer County was willing to moderate a candidate forum but not a candidate debate, and since a debate was what had been agreed to, the Carty campaign suggested Hutter as the moderator.
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