Photo: Courtesy of the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Sponsors: Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Candidates: "All  the candidates of both parties were invited to this forum."  Seven, all Democrats, accepted: Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Christopher Dodd, Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich,  Sen. Barack Obama, and Gov. Bill Richardson.

Moderator: Karen Tumulty, National Political Correspondent for TIME.

Audience: 925 people attended..."a pretty even mixture between SEIU members, the general Las Vegas, NV public, and UNLV students/faculty/staff."  The event was open to the public on a first come, first serve basis.

Broadcast: Televised on Vegas One (CBS Las Vegas affiliate) and made available via a pool feed to all television networks.

Format:  From Karen Tumulty's introduction:

"The order in which they will be speaking this morning is the order in which they accepted the invitation.

"The format is going to go like this: Each candidate is going to have 20 minutes.  They're going to have two to three minutes at the beginning to make an opening statement, we'll see how well we can hold politicians to that, and then of the remaining minutes, the remaining 17 to 18 minutes will be divided among questions from myself, questions from this audience, and questions that will be coming in over the internet by e-mail..."

[The sequence was Edwards, Richardson, Obama, Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel].

Additional Notes: From John Podesta's introductory remarks:

"This forum is not only the first to focus completely on our nation's health care crisis, but it's the first presidential forum ever to take questions directly from the blogosphere via think progress dot org and courtesy of a wide web cast provided by Real Networks."

Executive Producers: Michael C. Nguyen and Chris Wayne
 

CAPAF Forum page including video and transcript

CAPAF and SEIU press releases.
 

See also: Campaign for America's Future press releases

Copyright © 2007  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action