October 4, 2016 | No Comments
For every general election debate this year, there is a journalist waiting in the wings at the debate hall, ready to sit in the moderator’s chair should an emergency or illness arise.
This year, that person is Steve Scully, C-SPAN’s Political Editor and host of “Washington Journal.”
While covering the debates like the hundreds of other journalists who descend upon the four universities hosting the debates, Scully has also done the work to prepare his own separate sets of questions for every debate, as though he will be the moderator. That’s because he could end up being one.
“I have the file with me,” Scully said ahead of the debate at Hofstra University last week. “If they call me at 8:59 p.m. I’m ready to go, and if they do in the next three debates I’m ready to go as well.”
Though a backup moderator has not been used since the debate commission was formed in 1987, there have been moments in past debates where it could have come close. In 2008, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill broke her ankle shortly before moderating the vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. But despite being in a cast, Ifill still moderated and was wheeled into the event in a wheelchair. More recently, prior to the first Republican primary debate in 2015, Fox News host Megyn Kelly became “violently ill“, and did the debate with a blanket over her legs and a bucket at her side (the primary debates are organized by the networks, so in that case her Fox News colleagues would have filled in).
Though Scully does not expect to need to step in, the possibility is always in the back of his mind as he scurries around the debate sites, setting up interviews for C-SPAN. During the debates, he sits in the hall itself while the rest of the media watches from the filing center.
In preparation for each debate, Scully said he and his team looked back at the debates of 2008 and 2012 and scoured transcripts of recent interviews with Trump and Clinton. For Tuesday’s vice presidential debates, Scully said he had to spend “a lot more time researching the background for Gov. Pence and Sen. Kaine,” and watched the 2004 and 2012 debates and Kaine and Pence’s previous debate performances.
“It actually proved to be a lot more time consuming,” Scully said in an email before Tuesday’s debate. “But also fascinating and interesting to prepare.”