A voice outside the debate

Rick Stewart swears he's 'not a radical.” But he's got a radical idea.

If you're on the ballot, you ought to be on the stage.

That didn't happen Sunday for Stewart, who is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate from Cedar Rapids. The two major-party Senate contenders, Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst, duked it out in a debate at Simpson College, but Stewart couldn't even get a ticket to the auditorium.

So, after standing outside along with three other excluded candidates holding campaign signs, he watched the debate on a TV in a cafeteria.

'If the only thing you get in a debate are two candidates who have been coached to say nothing except what they've already said 100,000 times in a 30-second TV ad, then you're not really going to get a debate,” Stewart said Monday morning. 'You're going to get a public display of boredom, I guess.”

The debate's lead sponsor, KCCI-TV in Des Moines, sent Stewart a letter explaining why Ernst and Braley were the only candidates included. The station said a debate with all six hopefuls would be unworkable. It also cited a list of 'objective factors” including campaign activity, past political involvement, financial support, polls and 'spending on media.” That last one, suggesting that you can't debate if you don't spend a pile of bucks on attack ads, left Stewart 'flabbergasted.”

'It's pretty pitiful,” Stewart said, conceding that the station is following the law. 'They're not illegal. They're just anti-democratic.”

Debate sponsors should be free to invite who they want, and this is hardly new. A system created by two parties is rigged to benefit them. They have no reason to change it.

But consider the moment we're in, with our major parties locked in destructive, cynical warfare, armed to the teeth with unlimited cash. Iowa's U.S. Senate race is a prime example of everything wrong with politics. More than $20 million has been spent by outside groups on some of the nastiest ads Iowans have ever seen. Sunday evening's debate was a one-hour exchange of the same sad sludge. If you were hoping to hear how either Ernst or Braley planned to address problems we face, you were out of luck.

Maybe it's time to, at least, give some other voices a chance to be heard. Stewart, 63, founded Frontier Natural Products in 1976, retired in 1999 and has been on a remarkable journey ever since. 'Studied French in Paris and Spanish in Spain and Chinese in Beijing,” he said. Stewart hiked the Appalachian Trail and worked as a volcano guide in Guatemala to raise money for a village school. He worked as a police officer and earned an MBA at the University of Chicago.

He's been to 73 Iowa counties on his mountain bike. He's got some provocative, interesting ideas on immigration, Social Security, taxes and foreign policy. 'The kind of stuff I do is consensus-building and solution-driven and fun and entertaining and friendly. It's not attack and defend,” he said.

And not allowed on stage, apparently.

'And if that's American democracy, I'm going to register my complaint as loudly and vociferously as I can, without being obnoxious,” he said.

Stewart and other third-party candidates from across Iowa will gather in Iowa Ciity at 8 p.m., Wednesday in Schaeffer Hall room 140, for a forum sponsored by the University of Iowa Young Americans for Liberty.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com