Long Road Ahead

There's a confidence beginning to brew in the Barletta camp, and this became quite apparent when Barletta challenged Congressman Paul Kanjorski to debate 11 times before the fall election.

The Barletta proposal would consist of six summer debates to be aired on WILK radio. Each debate would last roughly 30 minutes and focus on a single issue.

Following the summer debates would be five hour-long, public debates in the fall. Each debate would be held in a different county (Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Monroe) to ensure the candidates covered the region.

Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell responded by signalling there would be debates between the two candidates, but didn't specify if Kanjorski would agree to Barletta's proposed framework.

This is an interesting move by the Barletta camp for two reasons. First, Barletta's legitimacy as a candidate seemed to be improving drastically everyday by simply doing nothing. That series of Kanjorski follies exponentially improved Barletta's odds and everyone seemed to take note that Kanjorski may indeed be doomed. Barletta's internal polling even had him with a lead in the race and several outlets noted the seat was indeed vulnerable. This series of debates may be a way for Barletta to further get his name out to the constituency and, in the process of doing so, increase his campaign cash for the all important fall months. Secondly, in the Hazelton mayorial race, Barletta was criticized by his opponent for failing to debate her. Therefore, this appears to be an furthered effort to break that perception of Barletta.