About the Blog:

Guelph Politico is locally sourced and dedicated to covering the political and cultural scene in the City of Guelph. Est. 2008.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Forum Interrupted

Cam Guthrie's bold experiment in political debating came to an abrupt end this week when his Civic Forum scheduled for... well, a lot of reasons actually. But most of those reasons have to do with the fact that people were ascribing ulterior motives to Guthrie's attempts to organize a debate of his own, being that he's a well-known Conservative supporter and presumptive nominee to replace Gloria Kovach should her seat open up on city council.

"Some people know my political past and thought there was some kind of angle, and that is completely false," he said in an interview with the Guelph Tribune on Thursday.

Now to be fair to Guthrie, he did do his best to diminsh critics' concerns about having any "angle" in putting on the debate, including replacing himself as moderator with U of G poli-sci Prof Tim Mau. But Frank Valeriote had already decided to pass, as noted in my Echo column this week, and it seems that Tom King was also saying, "Thanks but no thanks..." With only Kovach and Mike Nagy as confiirmed guests it was call the whole thing off time.

"I don't get it. It wasn't about me. I just thought, what a novel idea - instead of questions about policy, have questions about character. That's one of the things voters want to know about before they mark that X on voting day," Guthrie added in his Trib interview. Hm, I guess not.

Read my original posting about the Guthrie deabte here.

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