Tonight’s debate among 14 of the 17 candidates in the running for the 48th congressional seat took place in the city council chambers of the City of Irvine and was sponsored by UCI.

The debate format was three sections based on questions written by the moderator ( I think) with the candidates chosen at random to answer the question. Questions from the audience were put to the candidates at the end.

Some of the topics covered tonight were:
- The proposed tunnel
- Expansion of John Wayne Airport
- Mass Transit (And I was shocked to see a couple republicans in support of a light-rail/high-speed rail, guess oil prices will do that)
- Leadership in the aftermath of Katrina
- Stem Cells
- Construction of a new airport (this one will probably never die, it’ll just get more expensive as it peculates in the political system)

Most of the night the candidates were in agreement with each other (gee, no surprise). The real fireworks occurred during the closing statements when a person from the audience shouted something at Jim Gilchrist (I didn’t catch what was said, but Gilchrist looked like he was going to jump over the table). This was also around the time that Jim went after the only Green party candidate (he called her the Greenpeace candidate, which probably was not a Freudian slip of the tongue).

Tom Pallow discussed his quality economic plan (albeit in short one-minute segments as that was all of the time that the candidates had to answer). Bea Foster reiterated her stance against the Iraq war. The Libertarian candidate sounded like he used his campaign stump speeches from the 2004 election. In addition, the rest of the field, all Republicans (among them was Brewer) riled against Lawyers, never offered a plan to get us out of debt, and simply said we should stay the course.

Notably absent from the debate was the top two candidates in the race: Steve Young and John Campbell. According to the host both had “Prior engagements to attend to.”