Lincoln-Douglas debates don't have moderators and are considered to be more free-wheeling. Each candidate gets an allotment of time, followed by the other candidate and then the first person
goes again.
She said she hopes Obama will agree that Montanans deserve to hear them speak directly to their needs before the June 3 Montana primary.
Obama's Montana spokesman Matt Chandler said Obama has participated in 21 debates, including four nationally televised, one-on-one debates with Clinton.
“We're still evaluating the debate offer and are considering it in the context of our No. 1 priority, which is making sure the senator is able to have a direct conversation with Montanans on issues important to them.”
He said the Obama campaign had made a deep commitment to Montana, opening six field offices statewide and signing up thousands of supporters to vote for him June 3.
“We're taking Montana very seriously,” Chandler said.
Obama and Clinton both spoke at the Montana Democratic Party's Mansfield-Metcalf dinner in Butte on April, 5, but they were not on the stage at the same time. Both campaigned in Missoula that weekend.
The idea came from John Q. Murray, publisher of Clark Fork Chronicle, who in a Feb. 27 column called for a Lincoln-Douglas debate in Montana in mid-May. His newspaper, circulation 3,000, covers western Missoula County and Mineral County.
“It just seems like what a great opportunity,” Murray said. “It would be sort of unedited and unfiltered. The two candidates in one place, talking to the crowd and talking to each other. I think they should do it all through the country.”
He proposed the Lincoln-Douglas debate to both candidates via an e-mail in early February and then sent his column to both campaigns.
In his column, Murray noted it was exactly 150 years after Republican Abraham Lincoln faced off against Democratic Senate incumbent Stephan A. Douglas in seven debates on slavery across Illinois. Lincoln lost that race, but defeated Douglas, among others, for president two years later.
In 1858, the candidate who went first had an hour to speak, while the other candidate had 90 minutes. The first candidate had 30 minutes to conclude the debate. There were no moderators.
Murray wants to shorten these time limits to 30, 45 and 15 minutes, while Clinton's campaign favors a two-hour debate with each candidate getting two minutes to talk, followed by the other, and then rotating the order.
After e-mailing the campaigns, Murray said he “kind of forgot about it” until spotting a weekend story on the Huffington Post blog in which Clinton called for a Lincoln-Douglas debate with Obama. Murray dug up his old e-mail proposing the Montana debate and sent it to both campaigns again.
He was surprised to learn from a radio newswoman Monday that Clinton had accepted the offer.
Murray would like to see the nationally televised debate at the Adams Center on the University of Montana campus and volunteered to be the master of ceremonies.
“It's an idea whose time has come,” Murray said, citing the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the historic nature of the protracted Obama-Clinton race.
A Lincoln-Douglas style debate would contrast with ABC's nationally televised Clinton-Obama debate earlier this month where “the moderators really botched it by dealing with such trivia,” Murray said.
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