Last Thursday was the 12th anniversary since DU played host to a presidential debate.
Three elections ago, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney debated against President Barack Obama for the first time during the 2012 cycle inside Magness Arena. Over 67 million people tuned in to watch the debate on TVs across the globe.
PBS’s Jim Lehrer moderated the debate and divided the 90-minute duration into six 15-minute segments dedicated to discussing domestic issues. The candidates discussed the economy, healthcare, the role of government and governing.
The media coverage for the debate was immense and over 3000 media credentials were given out. One of the credentials given was to the DU Clarion and, in turn, some of the greatest work to ever come out of this publication was made soon after.
As previously previewed, this week’s Into the Archives topic is all about issue No. 20 of the 2012-13 school year — the Clarion presidential debate special edition.
The Into the archives column was an idea I came up with last quarter, in line with the Clarion’s celebration of its 125th anniversary. I siphoned through the Clarion digitized archives located at the DU Special Collections to help showcase the great history of our newspaper, and I will continue to do so for the rest of this quarter.
October 9, 2012 (vol. 119, no. 20)
I previewed this article in my previous column installment about presidential campaigning and this is the longest article in the special edition. It was written by Manthan Bhatt, the managing editor at the time, and is about the performances and talking points of each candidate.
The article’s headline claimed Romney won the debate and many agreed that the Republican candidate had claimed victory in Magness Arena. Bhatt reported that “instant polling done by CNN showed that Romney had won by 67 percent to 25 percent.”
A CNN article published in 2016 detailed the implications of the debate and said that the Democratic Party could learn from Obama’s mistakes in the 2012 debate in preparation for Hillary Clinton’s first debate in 2016.
The article opens, “The sheer panic Democrats felt in 2012 after Mitt Romney demolished Barack Obama at their first presidential debate in Denver can’t be overstated.”
Campus was absolutely electric around the debate and DU hosted a coinciding festival called DebateFest. The article above was written by two Clarion staff members and described the festivities that came with the Wednesday night festival.
Five thousand people were estimated to attend DebateFest, which took place on Carnegie Green. Food trucks, hot-dog eating contests, speeches from former Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and former Governor John Hickenlooper alongside a debate watch party made up the schedule for the evening.
Probably the highlight of the festival, Indie bands The Lumineers and Nathaniel Rateliff played a concert before the debate watch party started. Another Clarion writer wrote an Arts and Life article (at the time called the Entertainment section) about the concert and ended his article with a very optimistic viewpoint.
“Though dominated by The Lumineers, the musical selection of DebateFest was a trifecta of near perfection to kick off the pre-debate celebrations. The fluid guitar sounds of [Zach] Heckendorf, the unassuming, but moving performance of Rateliff and the sensational showmanship of the Lumineers made this concert series one audiences are sure to remember,” wrote Dylan Proietti, the entertainment editor at the time.
Of course, not all students watched the debate on their TVs or at the DebateFest watch party, as 270 selected students got to attend the debate in person. Each student was put into a lottery and USG representatives randomly selected the students for tickets to the event.
The article above contains interviews with three students who attended in person. One student talked about how she thought DU did a great job hosting, another talked about how she thought Lehrer’s moderation in the debate was lacking and another student discussed how the debate impacted them.
“It was probably the most surreal experience of my life,” said Jordan Rook. “I got to see possibly two of the best orators and it was just a fantastic opportunity.”
Three other fantastic articles make up what I think is the best edition of the Clarion in our 125-year history. To check them out for yourself and to see our archives of 2010-2019 editions, visit our Issuu archives page.
