Cooper and Raddatz
The wait is over. We now know who will be sitting in the moderator chairs, and they are two media A-listers.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced today that the presidential debate to be held Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis will be moderated by broadcast journalists Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz.
Cooper is the primary anchor of the CNN news program “Anderson Cooper 360,” and Raddatz is chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News.
Moderators for the other presidential debates and vice presidential debate are: Lester Holt, anchor, NBC Nightly News (first presidential debate, Sept. 26, Hofstra University); Elaine Quijano, anchor, CBSN, and correspondent, CBS News (vice presidential debate, Oct. 4, Longwood University); and Chris Wallace, anchor, Fox News Sunday (third presidential debate, Oct. 19, University of Nevada, Las Vegas). The CPD also announced that Steve Scully, senior executive producer, White House and political editor for C-SPAN Networks, will serve as back-up moderator for all debates.
In making the announcement, CPD co-chairs Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. and Michael McCurry said: “These journalists bring extensive experience to the job of moderating, and understand the importance of using expanded time periods effectively. The formats chosen for this year’s debates are designed to build on the formats introduced in 2012, which focused big blocks of time on major domestic and foreign topics. We are grateful for their willingness to moderate, and confident that the public will learn more about the candidates and the issues as a result.”
We couldn’t agree more.