According to the debate committee, the event is scheduled to take place at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami. The venue hosted the first Democratic debates of the 2020 primaries last year. Democrat Joe Biden is an old friend of the Arshts family and has stayed at home in the past. The New York Times first reported that the commission would move its debate to Miami.
Biden’s campaign has expressed its willingness to comply with any standard established by the presidential debate commission. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has challenged Biden to more debates, but the Democrat wants the president to commit to all three standard commission debates first.
Trump has been setting low expectations for Biden after the Democrat’s 10 relatively weak debate performances. However, in the 11th and final debate on March 15, Biden fared much better. The difference: It was a one-on-one debate, with Senator Bernie Sanders, and there was no crowd due to the start of the pandemic.
Biden’s advisers, who point out that Trump did poorly in his debates against Hillary Clinton in 2016, also point out that the former vice president has exceeded expectations in his previous individual debates with Republicans, Sarah Palin in 2008 and Paul Ryan in 2012. , when Biden was on the Barack Obama ticket.
The responsiveness to holding a debate was decidedly colder in Michigan, which has half the population of Florida, but has seen far more cases and deaths from coronavirus.
“Given the scale and complexity of the work we are doing to help ensure a safe and healthy drop for our limited students, faculty and staff, and visitors, and in consideration of public health guidelines in our state, as well as advice from our Experts themselves “We believe that it is not feasible for us to safely organize the presidential debate as planned,” wrote University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel in a letter shared with the commission.
In Miami, Suarez’s cautious optimism about the debate reaching Miami contrasts with the confidence of another Florida mayor, Lenny Curry of Jacksonville, who persuaded the Republican National Committee to move the nomination convention to his city after the game and the City of Charlotte, North Carolina could not agree to hold a full convention.
Both Curry and Suarez are Republicans, and both have seen reductions in coronavirus infection rates in their respective cities overall. But with the recent surge in infections in Miami-Dade, area mayors, including Suarez, announced Monday that everyone in public should wear protective masks.
Suarez, a moderate, has sometimes clashed with Giménez, but has worked closely with his neighboring Democratic mayor Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, who echoed the comments of the Miami mayor.
“I think it is good for our community to be the lens through which critical issues of the day are discussed,” Gelber said. “But, of course, any debate would need to fully meet the health standards required at the time.”
Meanwhile, Miami City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla was more optimistic about having the debate in his city, saying it could be done “carefully” with proper security protocols and the advice of experts and officials from Health.
“We are ready and we appreciate the opportunity to organize a presidential debate here in Miami,” said Díaz de la Portilla. “We need to return to normalcy, and presidential policy is no exception.”
