Washington State University not bitter over missing debate

When Washington University in St. Louis received the offer to host the vice presidential debate in November 2007, it was the second choice for an event that pundits never predicted would become big.

The first choice was Washington State University's campus in Spokane (WSU), a school making its first bid to host a presidential debate. Despite receiving an offer to host the vice presidential debate, WSU turned it down because it was worried about getting enough corporate sponsors for the event.

"It seemed like [getting enough money and sponsors] was a stretch for a presidential debate. It seemed like with a vice presidential debate it would be harder," Tinney said.

At the time, it did not appear as though the vice presidential debate would get as much attention as it has, especially since previous vice presidential debates had so few viewers.

"We had to make a decision based on the information we had at the time," Tinney said. "Now at that point everybody thought [the presidential candidates] would be Clinton and Giuliani."

The genesis for WSU's application was a new faculty member who had previously worked at Michigan State and had enjoyed hosting the event before. Like Washington University, WSU went through the Commission on Presidential Debates' application process for months.

"[We] had good cooperation with the community," James Tinney, WSU's director of media relations, said. "It was a useful exercise for us, but it turned out it didn't work out."

Although the debate wouldn't have been right on campus, there was still some political interest amongst the students who were already tuned into politics, according to Tinney.

This debate would have been especially poignant to those at WSU because Palin went to the University of Idaho, which is located only about eight or nine miles away.

"I think there's a local tie in there," Tinney said.

Currently, the political make up of the student body seemed unaffected by this connection.

The campus is located in eastern Washington, which is a very conservative part of the state. However, because of the general "liberalness" of college campuses, Tinney felt that the students political views were pretty evenly split.

"It's hard to predict the future," Tinney said.

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