{"id":1201,"date":"2009-10-28T20:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T00:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/28\/mr-hoffman-and-tonights-debate\/"},"modified":"2009-10-28T20:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T00:23:00","slug":"mr-hoffman-and-tonights-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/28\/mr-hoffman-and-tonights-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Hoffman and tonight&#8217;s debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some questions have been raised about Doug Hoffman&#8217;s involvement &#8212; or lack of involvement &#8212; in tonight&#8217;s debate.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>According to the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, Mr. Hoffman&#8217;s spokesman, Rob Ryan, suggested that the Conservative sat out the debate because of NCPR&#8217;s involvement.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>According to the newspaper, Mr. Ryan suggested that NCPR is a &#8220;liberal&#8221; news organization and that our involvement in the forum was an obstacle to Mr. Hoffman taking part.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>NCPR has had only cordial and professional contact with the Hoffman campaign.  Our reporters are friends and acquaintances with members of Mr. Hoffman&#8217;s staff and family.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>To suggest that we would treat Mr. Hoffman unfairly is simply baseless.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What&#8217;s more, Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Ryan had every opportunity to raise concerns about the format or structure of this event.  <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>They never did so.  Indeed, when I saw Mr. Hoffman this afternoon, in person, he apologized for not taking part &#8212; but still failed to offer a good rationale for remaining on the sidelines.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Even if one had concerns about our motives, it&#8217;s fair to ask:  <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If Mr. Hoffman felt unable to articulate his views in this setting, how will he perform in Congress, a far more combative and challenging venue?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I think anyone listening to the debate will understand our purpose very clearly.  We worked hard to refocus the conversation on bread-and-butter issues affecting the 23rd House district.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It would have been profitable for everyone if Mr. Hoffman had chosen to take part and share his own views.  <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Brian Mann, NCPR<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some questions have been raised about Doug Hoffman&#8217;s involvement &#8212; or lack of involvement &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}