The University of Southern California (USC) canceled a debate between gubernatorial candidates after receiving backlash for allegedly excluding non-White candidates.
USC planned to host a debate between six gubernatorial candidates, including Republicans Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff, and commentator Steve Hilton, and Democrats Tom Steyer, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Rep. Katie Porter, and Rep. Eric Swalwell.
“We recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” the university said in a statement to The Los Angeles Times. “Unfortunately, USC and [debate co-sponsor] KABC have not been able to reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates at tomorrow’s debate. As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.”
The shift occurred after former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who served as Biden’s health secretary, sent a letter to the university’s president condemning the “exclusionary candidate formula.”
“USC goes to great lengths to justify its exclusionary candidate formula. But you can’t escape the detestable outcome: you disqualified all of the candidates of color from participating while you invited a white candidate who has NEVER polled higher than some of the candidates of color, including me,” Becerra wrote. He went on to claim the university favored “wealthy candidates, candidates with mega donors, and candidates who have spent the LEAST amount of time exposed to voter scrutiny on the campaign trail.”
“It also smells of election rigging,” Becerra added.
Polls place Becerra in single-digit support.
Meanwhile, California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks urged Democrats to “honestly assess their viable path to win, and I continue to call for them to do so,” noting that the top two candidates for the gubernatorial race are Bianco and Hilton.
A group of the university’s scholars said in a statement that “[a]ttacks and insinuations from members of the political classes include completely baseless allegations of election-rigging, inconsistency, bias, and data manipulation.”
“These are harmful character assassinations, not substantive debate. They are of a piece with other attempts to strong-arm or malign scholars that have become all too common in America,” the statement continued, defending a formula developed by Professor Christian Grose. “Whatever their intent, the effect of these attacks is to diminish academic freedom and chill scholarly willingness to add their voices to the public square. It is imperative that universities defend their faculties’ integrity when it is unfairly attacked.”
