Whether on the left or the right, everyone at Northwestern, across the political spectrum, will have someone to seethe at on Oct. 12.
College Democrats and College Republicans will cosponsor an event bringing former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and former Republican senator of Pennsylvania Rick Santorum together to discuss the 2010 midterm elections, group leaders said in exclusive interviews with The Daily Northwestern.
Event organizers seemed confused about whether the event will function as a traditional “debate.” Matt Davis, the College Republicans vice president for special events, said it would not, pointing to the fact that Dean insisted that the stage at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall not have podiums. But the Facebook event created for the speakers explicitly calls itself a debate.
The event will begin at 7 p.m. Ticketing information has not yet been finalized.
The purpose of the event is to “ignite the election season on campus,” Davis said.
This is the first time in recent history that College Democrats and College Republicans have collaborated, according to the presidents of both groups. College Republicans President Brittany Bull said she made reaching across the aisle one of her most important goals when she took up her position last spring.
“Instead of giving lip service to bipartisanship, I decided to put this into action,” she said. “I hope that we set the example for the campus as a whole.”
College Democrats President Jonathan Forman also said collaboration was one of his goals and credited working together with bringing “a better event to campus.”
Dean, a former governor of Vermont, was a leader in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 before losing to John Kerry. Santorum lost his bid for a third Senate term in 2006.
Both politicians have made controversial statements and garnered their share of partisan hate in the past.
Dean became a viral legend after footage of his infamous “Dean Scream,” his reaction to a surprisingly poor performance in the 2004 Iowa Democratic Caucuses, hit YouTube in 2004 . He grabbed headlines again a year later after referring to the GOP as a “Christian party.”
Santorum has made a number of controversial statements himself, relating to homosexuals in particular. In a 2003 interview, he made comments that linked gay marriage to relationships consisting of “man on child” or “man on dog.”
Santorum might face some opposition from students on campus, but it does not seem he will have any serious protest with which to contend, student leaders said.
“We might have something to say about it,” Rainbow Alliance President Jeff Geiger said. “He’s a pretty offensive guy, but at the same time it’s the whole open political discourse thing.”
Neither Bull nor Forman expect the event to turn ugly and believe students will be respectful. Having two lightning-rod speakers, they said, will make the discussion worthwhile.
“We definitely weren’t opposed to controversy,” Bull said. “As seen by the Rod Blagojevich event that the College Dems did last year, controversy tends to get people excited.”
