4 Takeaways From the Last Kemp-Abrams Debate Before Election Day
Presidential campaigns are a great time to talk about policy, but it’s also a great time to talk about the candidate. This is especially true when a Democrat stands up to a Republican, and vice versa.
Last week, two men who were in the middle of the presidential cycle before the election faced each other in front of a live audience. They debated issues like gun control, the economy, the environment, and immigration. All of them were on the same team.
In his first speech, Scott Brady, the Republican candidate for Governor of West Virginia, made clear that he would be voting against his own party in Washington, D.C., and against Barack Obama in the White House.
So did John Adkins, the Democrat candidate in his own right.
Here are the six takeaways from their debate, as well as what we learned from it.
1. Scott Brady: “I’d like to make it very clear, I’m not a gun owner. I don’t know anything about guns whatsoever, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re not legal.”
“I believe the proper way to deal with guns is to lock them up,” Adkins replied. “We should ban, for example, assault weapons, which are probably the most popular type of weapons available to law-abiding citizens.”
2. John Adkins: “To those who would suggest that we’re not trying to make that argument that it was politically unwise to have a debate about gun control with a sitting President, I would say, they’re wrong. We don’t want any more dead children, we don’t want more dead children. That is one of my motivations. We are working to make the world a better place, and we are not just going to leave America to the political agenda instead of making the world a better place, and I believe that John Kerry is the man I should vote for in order to make that possible.”
3. Scott Brady: “I have no problem with raising the minimum wage to $9.50, and I think that’s probably the right number, to pay workers a livable wage.”
Adkins: “The minimum wage law in this country was meant to help the working man get a decent wage. If you
