“Face2Face: Meet the Candidates” is being held on Sunday, Oct. 13, at the Veterans Building in City Park in Bowling Green.
Doors open at 3:30 p.m. for informal conversations with the candidates and the program starts at 4 p.m.
Instead of having the candidates in front and the audience in rows of chairs, audience members will sit at round tables, and each table will have a LWV facilitator and a candidate. Audience members at each table will have about 10 minutes to ask questions of the candidate at their table. At a prompt from the moderator, candidates will move to the next table in rotation and the 10-minute question period will be repeated.
By the end of the evening each candidate will have sat at every table, and each audience member will have met every candidate face to face.
This format was tried in 2023 in Bowling Green and was well-received by both the candidates and the audience. It gets around situations with the previous format where if one candidate for an office does not participate, the other one can’t either.
“We feel the voters lose out when they can’t hear from both candidates for an office,” said Ellen Dalton, of the BG League of Women Voters.
Another feature of this format is that no one will be the seventh person to answer a particular question. Audience members who have a particular question should have a better chance of asking that question.
Being invited to participate are candidates running opposed for the following offices:
- U.S. House of Representatives 5th District
- U.S. House of Representatives 9th District
- State Senator 2nd District
- State House of Representatives 75th District
- Wood County Commissioner
- Wood County Recorder
- Wood County Treasurer
Candidates running unopposed in this election are invited to meet informally with the public from 3:30-4 p.m.
Co-sponsors of the event are the American Association of University Women Bowling Green Branch, Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce, and BGSU Retirees Association.
Questions should be directed to Ellen Dalton, edalton@bgsu.edu or 419-575-9159.
