Confusion abundant, but Northup will debate on Monday

Corley Everett (R-Louisville)

Anne Northup, the frontrunner for the 3rd Congressional District Republican nomination, will be in attendance at Monday night's candidate forum to be broadcast live on KET. All four Republican candidates are set to debate, shortly after two of Northup's opponents jointly circulated a press release claiming Northup was planning to skip the forum.

Northup's campaign, meanwhile, says their candidate was planning to attend the forum all along.

"We submitted our agreement to participate on March 10," said Scott Will, Northup's campaign manager. "We were in contact with KET because there were some scheduling difficulties, but we always intended to be there."

The circumstances surrounding the debate on the debate seem to have arisen first when candidate and Louisville property manager Corley Everett says he was told by KET that Northup had yet to confirm for the Monday forum.

"About a week ago, I called KET to confirm I was going to debate," Everett said today. "They told me that out of the four candidates that were attending, only one candidate had not confirmed, and that was Anne Northup."

Everett and fellow candidate and Louisville businessman Chris Thieneman then fired off a joint press release on Thursday asking why Northup was attending the debate.

After this release, Everett said he and Thieneman received a second call from KET.

"We got a call from KET that said Anne would go to debate if we agreed to set of conditions on how questions were asked," said Everett.

Everett said he was told Northup wanted to maintain a single order of questioning and answering during the debate.

"I think [Northup] wanted to be number one in the order of the questions every single time," said Everett.

Northup's campaign claimed the opposite, saying they wanted to ensure the order was not static.

"I called KET because I had some questions about the debate order," said Will. "We wanted to see if we could mix up the order a little."

Either way, when Everett, Thieneman, and fellow candidate Bob Devore were contacted to discuss Northup's request, Everett and Devore agreed to continue with the debate. Thieneman refused.

"There were already conditions that were on the debate and we've had them for months now," said Thieneman. "To go and change them at the ninth hour when you had months to complain about it - I just felt like it wasn't appropriate."

After Thieneman's refusal, all candidates subsequently agreed to the debate without any changes.

Northup's campaign indicated the debate order was not worrying to them.

"We're totally fine with that," said Scott Will. "We are excited to be there."

KET's Deidre Clark, who will produce Monday's candidate forum, would not comment on the specifics of the negotiation process other than to confirm the attendance of all candidates.