The Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts have booked two televised debates in the greater Boston area.
U.S. Reps. Stephen Lynch and Edward Markey will square off first in their first debate on March 27 at the studios of PBS affiliate WGBH-TV in Needham. The debate will air live at 7 p.m. and is organized by a media consortium including WGBH-TV, NECN, WCVB-TV, WHDH-TV, WGBH Radio, WBUR Radio and Bloomberg Radio.
“The Boston Media Consortium has a strong history of producing substantive debates and this year will be no exception,” said WGBH Executive Producer Linda Polach on behalf of the consortium in a statement. “We are pleased that the Democratic candidates will participate in an issue-focused debate. We will continue to engage the Republican candidates to ensure that voters have the opportunity to hear from all candidates before the April 30 primary election.”
And the other debate the two campaigns have agreed to is the last debate of the pre-primary season for the Democrats. Lynch and Markey will debate on April 22 at 7 p.m. from the WBZ-TV studios in conjunction with the Boston Globe.
That debate will be moderated by political analyst Jon Keller with questioning coming from a Boston Globe panelist.
On the Republican side, former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, State. Rep. Daniel Winslow and businessman Gabriel Gomez have agreed to participate in a public forum at Stonehill College on March 12.
Lynch and Markey will participate in a similar forum there on April 1.
The Springfield Public Forum and the Western Massachusetts Media Consortium, a coalition of news and community organizations that delivered the final debate of the 2012 Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, has also extended invitations to both Lynch and Markey, as well as the Republican contenders.
The consortium’s intention is to respectively host each party’s candidates for pre-primary debates and welcome the primary winners back for a general debate in Springfield. Discussions with the campaigns are ongoing and additional details will be published as they are firmed up in the coming days.
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