After many hours of preparation, my Spectrum News colleagues and I settled on 11 substantive questions to ask Governor Kathy Hochul and Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman in their first and only televised debate in the race for governor, and I got through ten of them with my co-moderator, Susan Arbetter, before time ran out. But that still leaves pressing matters we couldn’t fully explore that New York’s governor will have to confront when the State Legislature convenes in January, on topics ranging from housing to food stamps to mental health.

We’re lucky that Hochul and Blakeman agreed to debate at all. New York has no legal requirement that state candidates show up for public debates unless they receive money through the state Campaign Finance Board, and Hochul, flush with campaign cash, hasn’t joined the matching funds program.

It’s too bad we don’t have mandatory debates for important offices; when public, non-scripted discussions of issues are optional, politicians often duck debates for fear of making a verbal or visual stumble that can go viral and send a campaign into a death spiral. Even before a catastrophically shaky debate performance in 2024 ended the reelection chances of President Joe Biden, a generation of campaign consultants routinely warned their clients against repeating disasters like the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. (Nixon, not wanting to appear fancy or phony, declined an offer to put on TV makeup and ended up looking sallow and nervous next to John F. Kennedy’s Hollywood good looks.)

Another cautionary tale, the New York Senate debate of 2000, featured a popular Long Island congressman, Rick Lazio, who never recovered from the ill-advised stunt of marching over to the podium of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, while angrily waving a piece of paper (a pledge not to accept soft-money donations) and demanding that she sign it on........

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