Transcripts For CSPAN2 Campaign 2020 Utah Governors Debate 2

The questions for the debate will come from myself, students from Utah Valley University, members of the news media and the viewing audience participating on social media and response times to questions are defined but will vary from one to two minutes if needed. Candidates will have the opportunity for a 32nd rebuttal. Prior to the debate tonight, a virtual coin toss determined spencer cox will provided the pe initial response to the first question and will alternate who answers first on the remaining questions. And lets get right to those questions now. This is to both of you and it will go to you, Lieutenant Governor, first. If you are elected, certainly you will affect the history and the direction of the state of utah for at least four years, maybe eight. In the state of utah it isnt unusual to go even beyond that. But lets talk about two terms. What should utah look like under your leadership with your administration in the year 2028, and what specifically do you hope at the end of the time period almost a decade away now that your administration will be remembered for doing in our great state . Thank you. This year has been one for the record books and all of the wrong ways but the future is incredibly bright and if i get the opportunity to serve as your governor i hope eight years from now as we look back over the course of the eight years, what we have been able to accomplish again together, it will look like today only better. But there are certain areas that we will be focusing on and its not for the pandemic but more specifically in the area of education. We lead the nation and upward mobility and with the lowest poverty rate. Those are things we should be proud of but unfortunately, not everyone has been able to take advantage of the best economy in the nation over the last ten years. My goal is looking back eight years from now, we will show that prosperity that so many have taken advantage of will also be enjoyed by people in rural utah and people in the multicultural communities and by everyone that equal opportunity to participate. Now the same question for Chris Peterson. In the administration for 18 years what will utah be like and what will you take pride in having done . My hope is after the administration, we will quickly get through this Coronavirus Crisis. To get the economy back on track and Start Building the economy of the future. In the Peterson Administration i want to focus on making sure we are no longer dead last for our Public School system. I want to make sure we have a government that is responsive to the public instead of overturning the ballot measures the public voted for and replacing them with watereddown versions, a government that actually listens to the people and is moderate and promotes fair and affordable taxes. I also think weve got to do a better job cleaning up our air. Its been a problem for too long and we need to make progress. Last, weve got to make sure more of the access to the healthcare they need in order to stay healthy, we are one of the lower third of states in terms of the number of people that have access. We need to do a better job and i hope to lead in that respect in the administration. Thank you. In different times, this would have happened at Utah Valley University. So, we have some of the students of utah valley asking questions tonight. Lets get the first question right now. My name is preston and im a student at Utah Valley University. My question for both of you is what should the government do about College Students because they clearly havent been taking it seriously and it is an ongoing problem. We go to Chris Peterson first and we will allow 90 seconds on this one. Mask wearing is one important part of trying to get the coronavirus situation back under control. First i would impose a statewide mask mandate with reasonable exceptions. Nobodys saying if you are a rancher that you should have a mask on but its one of the things we do to love our neighbors and protect one another. The best Scientific Evidence says that its likely to help limit the spread of the disease. And whats more, we need to have it across the state because one community can see infections in another community. We have got to Work Together as a team to get it under control but its not just about masks. We need to decrease the processing time for the tests. We still have tests at some locations taking two or three days or even a week to get processed and in the meantime people dont know if it is safe to go back to work or school. Weve got to make sure we are doubling or tripling the number of contact tracers so when we start to get the rate down we can identify where the pockets might be flaring up and try to get people humanely and safely quarantined and we have to do a better job getting the resources we need in places it makes sense for them to go. I believe we have squandered a lot of money on things like cell phone applications that didnt work. We still dont have masks widely available for the frontline workers. Weve got to have the best Available Technology and provide it in a costeffective and transparent way. Now to the Lieutenant Governor, same question from the student. I want to thank preston for the question because the fact you are asking the question makes me know that you know how important it is to wear a mask. We do have mask mandates at all of the colleges and universities and we still have too many young people that are not wearing their mask. Its being driven by young people and the New York Times did a piece that talked about how this is happening across the country in red states and blue states. We have two major colleges being put together and many of them are doing it the right way but many of them also arent so we have to educate people. One of the things i love about your generation you do care about people and each other and we know that the virus doesnt impact people your age as much as others. Most of you will recover just fine and there will not be any longterm repercussions. If we could keep it to you, that would be great but here is the problem, that doesnt work. We know that young people inevitably interact and the virus doesnt care what age you are. Its designed to help other people understand the importance of wearing a mask, social distancing and taking this seriously. My message is please, please take this seriously. You care about others it may not hurt you but it could kill someone else. I mentioned this at the beginning of the debate. We will start with spencer cox first. We have had people participate, the students on the website seemed elsewhere. This is the number one thing people are asking about and i will kick it off with this question. Will you enforce a statewide mandate to help curve covid19. Maybe i could add to that if you have the authority today, would you or would you not ask a straight up question expecting a straight up answer. Would you if you had the authority today declare a mask mandate or perhaps this is a question we get asked all the time. The last three times i was asked, i support where we are today and what the governor has chosen to do. Leaving mask mandates to individual communities to make that decision. Let me tell you a couple of things that i think are important about this. We have been pushing for masks. Ive been pushing for months. If you care about your neighbors, you should wear a mask. If you have to have the law to mandate you to wear a mask you are probably not going to do it anyway. And it doesnt make that much of a difference. Let me share the data. We go out every week and survey hundreds of surveyors that go out and measure mask wearing across the state. Im excited to let people know we had the highest numbers ever about 1500 observations and mask wearing was at 86 . Thats the highest number we have seen so far and that is great news. Right now, and majority is under a mask mandate of course salt lake as is utah county. And i thought i have smiths will, but it looks like my time is up. It was one minute. I apologize. I would have wrapped that up sooner. We will go ahead. No problem. We will give you a little extra time on this, chris. Thank you, doug. I come from a statewide mandate back in july. I would do it today because we have had a skyrocketing infection rates and we are now the fourth worst state in the country in terms of per capita outbreaks and infections, and that is according to the cdc numbers, the best available science. Weve got to do more to get the virus under control because it is critical for saving lives. I hate wearing masks. I dont like it it gets foggy. I dont enjoy it either but there are a lot of things we do in a Civilized Society to take care of one another. We have mandates up stopping at traffic lights. If you show up to work you probably have to wear your pants. There are things we need to do as a society to take care of one another. This will not last forever but right now, we need to wear masks and that is why i would require it as a matter of law. This has been such an interesting question asked by so many. We go once again to our students from uv you. My question for the candidates schools are opening fulltime despite the outbreaks. Mr. Peterson, lets go to you and perhaps we can focus on the churches and schools. First, i already talked about a number of different strategies i think we need to put in place to get the virus under control including increased testing, contract pricing, protective equipment, and of course we talked about the mask mandate. With respect to the schools and churches, i recognize we need to have some schools open because kids need to get that education. Parents need to get them to go back to school to have child care. If i had been in church i would have worked with the department, the education authorities to try to increase a little more gradually to focus on the youngest kids first because they are the ones that have the hardest time with Distance Learning and the best immune response to the disease. With respect to churches, again, my similar response is if we can try to do things outside its best if we try to go slow and maintain social distancing. Its critical that we do that especially in this difficult time when so many lives are at stake. Lets talk about schools, and i think this is important. Look, there are other things at play damaging besides the coronavirus. Its important and we are taking it very seriously, but the repercussions of not having kids in school can be just as significant and worse in some cases. In fact many of the students are being left behind especially those in low income areas, students with disabilities. The Salt Lake City School District is the only in the state that hasnt gone back to in Person Learning and that is a huge mistake. Its damaging our kids and that needs to change. We are working very closely with School Districts and ther theres amazing innovation happening. When we start to see outbreaks, we can pay for it and go to a hybrid model. Once we pivoted to the hybrid model where kids are only there half the time, they are able to get that under control. This is a dance we are going to have to do over the next few months to allow kids back in school but also keep them safe. We are pleased this evening to have our friend and colleague with us. Gentlemen, good to be with you this evening. You recently called on governor herbert to remove the governor for his role with the task force, citing in part that you felt it was outside of his area of expertise. Talk about why you believe its inappropriate for him to be serving that position and in your response, why do you believe that it does fit within your expertise and why do you think that it was appropriate for the governor . We will go with spencer cox first and then Chris Peterson will have the response. Its hard to respond to his arguments against me i will go first. It isnt personal. I generally like the Lieutenant Governor. Hes a good guy and i think we are already kind of becoming that at least i hope for that to be the case but heres the problem. Its about saving peoples lives. Jobs are on the line and Small Businesses or collapsing. The Coronavirus Response was offtrack. We are now the fourth worst in the country for Coronavirus Infections and that is having a consequence not just for peoples health, but also for businesses and jobs. People face longterm scarring and care kidney damage and even brain damage associated in this dangerous disease. Thats why weve got to do more and we need to be listening to the Public Health experts at the department of health to get this in the best way possible. I think we are becoming friends and by the way, whatever happens in the next hour is going to be completely bonkers compared to what is happening right now. The task force and what has followed it is bringing together the very experts that hes talking about. If you get the chance to be governor, part of being governor or Lieutenant Governor means you have to make incredibly difficult decisions. We are threading a needle. This is a pandemic unlike anything we have seen and we have brought together and are still working over 250 individuals every day the best and brightest in the state. Medical professionals, Emergency Response teams coming together making recommendations to the governor that then makes the decisions. That is what is best about utah and it shows in our success the best economy during a pandemic with unemployment 4. 1 and one of the lowest mortality rates in the country at. 6 . Now again it hasnt been perfect and we have a long way to go but we are working together to find the solutions. I agree we have had success and we have a department of health that is involved but we have also had challenges weve spent over 100 million and still havent gotten to the situation the virus is under control and second, we are closing low Income Health clinics that could be used to fight disease. Weve wasted money on medicine science shows doesnt work. Thats not appropriate. We need better leadership on the virus. Do we have a request for rebuttal . I will go ahead and request a rebuttal. This response is about all coming together. Im very proud of the people that have stepped up in this response. There have been mistakes and ive been clear about that in the past. I talked to my colleagues across the country and they will tell you that utah is doing it the right way. We are working together and we will continue to lower the spread and save lives. One of my concerns as the moderator was certainly we need to address covid19 but theres so much more long after its in the Rearview Mirror there were still the huge issues and opportunities read id like to talk about them right now and one is quality of life. Gentlemen, as we look at the population of utah now, and its doubling by 2050, we look at the growth and the traffic and the infrastructure. You look at all of the people that would end the lifestyle in utah and population growth, home grown ihomegrown in the state o. I would like to talk about how we maintain the quality of life that we have here in our state and lets start with spencer first one minute. Thank you. There is a reason that utah is the Fastest Growing state in the nation wit for the last ten yea. We have a lot of kids and that is one of the main reasons but we are top ten in migration. People have discovered its a beautiful place and we have the best economy over the last ten years. That is bringing people from all over the world to come here to raise their kids and get a job and enjoy the quality of life that we have. We cant maintain that if we are not careful. There is a very simple formula that i use all the time. Youve heard me use it before and that is when infrastructure proceeds growth the quality stays high. When it proceeds infrastructure, the quality of life declines. We are investing in infrastructure and have an incredible airport that just opened. The interchanges are improving. We have to work and som in somer areas. Mass transit has to get reliable and we can build that density to make sure the quality of life stays high. Mr. Peterson, your response. Its an important component to continue to have a great place to live, but we also need to focus on making sure our kids have Great Schools to go to. We are dead last in perpupil funding and weve got to get the air pollution challenges under control. Demographers are predicting we will have millions of additional people moving in and growing up here and that will put more air pollution in the air if we dont get ahead of that. I also think we need to focus on making sure we are spreading out the Economic Development not just along the fund, but across the state to the more rural areas and broadband to try to facilitate the teleworking and developing jobs out in other communities across the state to spread out and use our wonderful lands to our best advantage. All things we can do to make the country and state the best possible place to live. I think we have a bright and optimistic future and you can count on me to be a moderate focused on Practical Solutions guiding us gently in that direction. From channel five here with us. Id like to stay on that topic of the quality of life. Those born and raised in utah worry the state is simply becoming unaffordable because of the skyrocketing cost of housing. Candidates, tell me your plan to address the shortage of housing and how to make it more affordable. Im glad you asked the question. We need to make sure we are not just developing jobs, but careers. People need to make enough money to have a living wage to buy a house and rent an apartment. That is step number one. Step two, i think we should be increasing taxes to make sure that we are building