02.17.08
Clinton/Obama Debates from Austin on CNN
Heights Dems, "Debate Watch Party" 6:45pm
Star Pizza, 77 Harvard (3600 Washington Av)
Come watch with your friends and let’s raise the roof!!
The debate:
Where: University of Texas Recreational Sports Center
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 21
Tickets: The Democratic Party will make about 100 available to the public through a drawing.
Broadcast: Live on CNN (rebroadcast later that evening on Univision)
The Recreational Sports Center, at San Jacinto Boulevard and 20th Street, was chosen in part because of security and acoustic needs. A larger space would not have worked well for TV, officials said.
The top-floor gym at the University of Texas’ Recreational Sports Center will be set up for a debate audience of 1,000 to 3,000 people. UT and the Democratic Party will make some tickets available.
"First and foremost, this is a television show," said Susan Binford, assistant dean at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, which is helping organize the event.
U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will face off at the UT Recreational Sports Center gym at San Jacinto Boulevard and 20th Street, university officials said. Between 1,000 and 3,000 people will be in the audience, but set designers are still working on layout, said Sam Feist, political director of CNN. The debate will air on CNN and Univision.
UT, the Texas Democratic Party, the Obama and Clinton campaigns and CNN and Univision will invite people to the debate, university officials said.
Binford said UT’s priority is to have students attend.
The Democratic Party said late Wednesday that it will make 100 tickets available to the public through a drawing.
The state party initially said that no public tickets would be available and that most audience members would be elected officials. That prompted angry blog posts and calls to local Democratic Party offices.
"We have received a huge volume of calls today on this subject, some of which have been less than pleasant for our staff to hear and deal with and which accuse us of all manner of bad behavior," Travis County Democratic Party Chairman Chris Elliott wrote in an e-mail newsletter Wednesday.
Many Austinites expressed outrage that a larger venue wasn’t chosen, but a larger place would not have worked well for TV, Feist said.
"The larger the venue, the worse the audio," he said.
Other recent CNN debates have taken place in an airplane hangar in California, a gym in Nevada and a hockey arena in New Hampshire, Feist said. Since the debate was announced Monday, CNN officials have been scouring possible sites that could accommodate needs such as security and the national media. This is the fastest the network has ever had to pull together a debate, Feist said.
The Texas Democratic Party is hosting a watch party the night of the debate at the Hyatt Regency, 208 Barton Springs Road, from 6:30 to 10 p.m., state party spokesman Hector Nieto said. Admission is $50. Clinton and Obama have been invited to attend after the debate, Nieto said.
