D’oh.
Via Miami Herald:
A proposed U.S. Senate debate on Univision Miami between Republican incumbent Marco Rubio and Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy has been scrapped because the two campaigns couldn’t agree on what language the event would be conducted in on the Spanish-language network.
Rubio — and Univision, an email from the network shows — wanted the debate in Spanish, while Murphy’s campaign insisted on a debate in English that would then be dubbed in Spanish for the network’s Hispanic viewing audience.
Rubio’s campaign accused Murphy of “blowing off” the debate, but Murphy campaign spokesman Joshua Karp said a debate in Spanish “has never been used in a statewide debate in Florida and would not allow for a vibrant exchange of ideas between the candidates.”
Murphy isn’t fluent in Spanish; Rubio, a Cuban American, is.
Murphy agreed to the Univision debate only last week, a month after Rubio did and after Murphy had begun aggressively stepping up his outreach to Hispanic voters starting in late September.
Murphy’s campaign wanted the condition of a debate in English, citing the need for “a fair playing field for both candidates.” Although, the campaign also said: “Patrick has always felt that Florida’s Senate election should include a Spanish-language debate.”
The format Univison itself proposed — as presented to the campaigns on Wednesday, according to an email supplied to the Herald/Times by Rubio’s campaign and confirmed by Murphy’s — was for a true Spanish-language debate.