( 4UMF NEWS ) Female Moderator Picked For Presidential Debates:
The Commission on Presidential Debates just made three teenage girls from New Jersey very happy by picking CNNs Candy Crowley to moderate one of this year’s three showdowns.
Crowley will be the first women to moderate a general election presidential debate in 20 years, the commission announced Monday. Another woman journo, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, will helm the vice presidential debate.
Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis of Montclair High School in New Jersey got well over 100,000 people to sign their petition asking the commission to invite a woman to moderate one of the major debates this fall. The girls had tried to hand-deliver their petition to the commission several weeks ago but no one was willing or able to meet with them.
Days later, they got some help from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who took to Twitter to say she agreed it was long past time for a woman to get the job.
“It’s been 20 years since a woman has moderated a prez debate,” Pelosi wrote. She went on to suggest Crowley, ABC News’ Diane Sawyer, PBS’ Gwen Ifill, or NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell for the high-profile gig.
While Ifill has headed up VP debates, the last woman to helm a presidential debate was Carole Simpson back in 1992. Barbara Walters presided over the 1976 and 1984 debates.
Crowley will moderate the second presidential debate of the 2012 general election — which will use a town hall format — Oct. 16, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Raddatz will moderate the vice presidential debate a week earlier, Oct. 11, in Danville, Kentucky.
The other commission picks are PBS’ Jim Lehrer and CBS News’ Bob Schieffer, who are moderating presidential debates Oct. 3 in Denver and Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla., respectively.
