Friday, November 03, 2006

Rep. Taylor Ducks Shuler Debate

Breaking...

Rep. Charles Tayor (R-NC) failed to appear at Asheville, NC radio station WWNC to debate his Democratic opponent Heath Shuler. Taylor called WWNC from another station in a nearby town and said he was willing to debate Shuler from a remote location. Taylor said he couldn't get to the debate location because of traffic problems.

Shuler walked out on the debate, noting that there was no way to verify that Taylor was abiding by the debate rules. Among Shuler's concerns was that Taylor's staff would be feeding him information during the debate. Shuler was without support staff in the WWNC control room.

Taylor is well-known for a bungled "No" vote on the CAFTA trade agreement, where he promised constiutents that he would vote against the treaty but when the crucial vote came, according to Taylor, his machine malfunctioned and recorded the "Yes" [a commenter named Anon has pointed out that this statement is wrong--see Backdate below] vote necessary to pass the treaty. Taylor has a history of other ethical problems.

This story is breaking. Most of the information above came from WLOS-TV. No links yet.


Update: Hooligans has a very comprehensive post on this nondebate available here.

Backdate: See I can type stuff in Google! Following is Mountain Xpress' take on the CAFTA vote:

...Before and since the vote, which passed by a narrow two-vote margin (217-215), Taylor has steadfastly opposed CAFTA in his public statements. And yet, Taylor, an eighth-term Republican who long ago proved his prowess at navigating the halls of power in Congress, somehow didn't manage to register a vote.

Taylor, who has cast thousands of votes in his 14 years representing the people of Western North Carolina, insists that he cast a "no" vote on the crucial piece of legislation. In a July 28 statement, he asserted that "due to an error, my 'no' vote did not record on the voting machine."

If that is the case, it is a most unusual error. The day of the CAFTA vote, Taylor and his congressional colleagues had cast numerous votes on a wide range of legislative matters. Taylor, for his part, successfully cast no less than 11 votes, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He voted in favor of a bill to expand patient access to drug addiction-treatment programs, for example, and for one to support women's rights in Iraq.

And he maintains he voted against CAFTA, which was signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 2, lifting trade restrictions with the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic. According to the official tally, however, Taylor didn't vote on CAFTA at all.

A vote that counted?

Taylor remains adamant that he voted, but that the vote was not recorded by the electronic-voting system. But that statement differs from several other, sometimes conflicting, accounts from Taylor, his staff and other Republicans...

Go figure.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The radio debate time was changed from 5:00pm to 3:00pm the day of the event because Shuler came up with a last second scheduling conflict. Rep Taylor said that he could do the debate but that he would have to do it from WHKP in Hendersonville. Shuler walked out of the studio and Rep Taylor stayed on WHKP and answered questions for an hour after Shuler again backed out of a debate. Further you need to actually learn about politics if you are going to write about them. Rep Taylor's vote on CAFTA was not recorded and is reflected as not voting instead of a yea vote as you stated. Please just for your own sake do the slightest bit of research before embarrassing yourself.

Bob Harrison said...

Well, my response did not post the first time but in brief: how does voting "not present" (or whatever that story actually was about malfunctioning machines) not work out to be a "YES" vote in favor of the treaty? Jobs got shipped out thanks to the lack of a "No" vote. Yeah, I didn't look it up because I was in a hurry. So you are correct in that assertion--my memory was faulty.

I can type stuff in Google just as well as the next guy btw; I just didn't do it.

I'm stating what happened based on the emails released to WLOS by WWNC. I don't see how they support your version of events.Anyone who wants to go over to Scrunity Hooligans and get a good blow-by-blow of the whole affair.

Nevertheless, I appreciate your opinion, and no, I'm not embarrassed.

Gordon Smith said...

Further, if you'll listen to the audio at the AC-T or from WWNC, you'll hear Matt Mittan explain very clearly that Taylor had violated the rules and that Shuler had every right to close the debate.

Bob Harrison said...

You're right. I thought that was what they were saying on 13 but my reception was fuzzing so I wasn't sure about that. Anyway, I don't think Shuler is at fault-- to me it's another voting machine malfunction.