Two candidates faced very different versions of the same question at an Iowa presidential forum on Friday, leading to accusations of moderator bias. For many, the presidential forums and town halls are, so far, the best part of the 2020 Democratic primary. As of Saturday morning, there have been 26 such events, with Saturday afternoon bringing #27—all tackling a wide array of issues and aiming to invite members of various communities into the fold. Friday’s LGBTQ forum—hosted by GLAAD, The Advocate, One Iowa, and the Cedar Rapids Gazette—brought eight of the top ten candidates (plus Joe Sestak and Marianne Williamson) to the same stage (though never at the same time, per DNC rules). Hosted by actress Angelica Ross, the forum pitted the candidates against a rotating trio of moderators: Gazette columnist Lyz Lenz, One Iowa Policy Director Keenan Crow, and Advocate Editor-in-Chief Zach Stafford.
Headlines and the inevitable analysis of the candidates’ performances are emerging, but the actions of one of the moderators, the Gazette’s Lenz, are also worth a second look. Lenz interviewed three of the top five candidates: former Vice President Joe Biden, California Sen. Kamala Harris, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Biden’s appearance has been widely panned, but media coverage seems far less concerned with the two same-but-different questions Lenz asked Harris and Warren about their “evolving” views.
To anyone watching the LGBTQ Forum in real-time, Lenz’s conversations with Harris, 54, who took the stage before Warren, seemed reasonable enough, though she gave a single 2015 brief significant weight in the former attorney general’s undeniably pro-LGBTQ “history.” Records are important, of course, and candidates and politicians at any and every level absolutely must answer for the actions of their past if they expect voters to champion their cause and their constituents to support them.
Watch the question in question:
Harris responded well, explaining to Lenz that she filed the brief in opposition to gender-affirming surgery on behalf of her client, the Calif. Dept. of Corrections, even as she was maneuvering behind the scenes to (successfully) bring about, months later, the changes to CDOC policy that rendered the brief irrelevant. Harris then touched on her numerous other battles to protect the transgender community, including hosting a convening of the nation’s prosecutors, where she taught them how to defeat so-called “trans-” and “gay-panic” defenses.
Later, while Harris tackled a question about LGBTQ court battles, Lenz cut her off as she spoke about California’s fight against Prop 8, and the joy of getting to marry a same-sex couple after the 2015 Supreme Court victory in Obergefell v. Hodges.
LENZ: “You’re talking a lot about what you’ve done, but what are you gonna do, is what we’re looking forward to ...”
HARRIS: “That’s fair, but I tell you that because there are a lot of new friends here, who ... do not know me. And so I want to put in context the words I’m speaking about, what I will do, to let you know that I am not new to the subject. And I intend to follow through on the commitment I have long held, not just because I am running for president.
Again, watching real-time, as Harris said herself, the discussion seems fair.
Context, however, is everything, and some 30 minutes later, Lenz was in the moderator’s seat again, with Warren where Harris once was. Now, it’s no secret that Warren, 70, was registered as a Republican until the mid-’90s, when she was in her late 40s; additionally, while many of the 2020 candidates, including Harris, were already in public office, she was a professor. As POLITICO noted in April, Warren downplays her time as a member of the GOP; further, her hard pivot to the left is often hailed as part of what makes her different.
The story of Warren’s awakening—from a true believer in free markets to a business-bashing enforcer of fair markets; from a moderate Republican who occasionally missed an election to one of the most liberal senators in America vying to lead the Democratic Party—breaks the mold of the traditional White House contender and is key to understanding how she sees the world: with a willingness to change when presented with new data, and the anger of someone who trusted the system and felt betrayed.
People change, of course, and it’s always great when they see the light of equality that fuels progressive policy and join Team Blue. But this is a story not about Harris or Warren; rather, this is about the difference in treatment that these senators faced at Friday’s forum, and media bias. As with Harris, Lenz’s first question to Warren focused on her changed views about gender-affirming surgery for transgender inmates—but her approach was quite different. The clip below is precisely cued for your viewing pleasure.
Do you see the difference? Warren’s turnaround—which just happened in January 2019—is simply praised, without her previous views being challenged in the least. While Harris and Warren held different positions of power before finding themselves both in the Senate, and both running for president in 2020, that does not justify Lenz’s gloss-over.
Harris is framed as untrustworthy, while Warren is positioned as the one to lead all the other transphobic people into the light. Harris is forced to defend herself, while Warren is never asked to address her previous stance or prove herself trustworthy to the trans community. Notably, Warren doesn’t discuss her earlier views at all, much less her “evolution,” because she didn’t have to. With her question, Lenz granted Warren not just her absolution, but also the trust of the LGBTQ community moving forward.
This, dear readers, is what bias looks like. Only watching one of the conversations, they both might seem reasonable. It’s when one watches both that it becomes clear that Harris got the fastball, while Lenz brought out the tee for Warren.
As our own Jen1899 wrote early on Saturday:
While the moderator presented Harris as an “other”; somebody that the trans community might not be able to “trust”, Warren is presented as a part of the collective “we.” The question is framed “How can people trust you?” versus “How can people evolve like you?”, and it’s difficult to find any justification for this based on Harris and Warren’s records, particularly given that Harris worked to change the policy in California, while Warren just changed her position at the start of her presidential campaign. [...]
It’s certainly interesting that she enjoys the presumption of allyship and good intent, while that same presumption is not afforded to Kamala Harris, who has been in the trenches with the LGBT community for fifteen years – or in other words, her entire public life. It’s certainly interesting that Harris is the one who gets painted as “untrustworthy” on LGBT issues. And again, it’s difficult – or rather, impossible – to find a substantive reason why.
Jen1899 also shared this clip from POLITICO’s Christopher Cadelago, which slams the different queries against each other.
The questions that remain after this episode aren’t easy ones, but they aren’t questions for the candidates, who, just to be clear, are not the center of this controversy. This is NOT a matter of Warren vs. Harris. Lenz is the one in the hot seat now, and she has yet to explain why she took such different approaches in the forum, or acknowledge how that variance confirms the assertion, just weeks ago, that “white bias persists.” In a Sept. 4 essay for the Gazette, called “Iowa, you are racist,” Lenz admits she was a “silent observer” to a recent racist incident in a restaurant, and lightly chides herself, saying that “polite quiet is ... how the infection spreads.”
With that in mind, regardless of which candidate is “your” candidate, we all have a responsibility to not be politely quiet, to demand better from the media, and to call out these uneven approaches when we see them.
