Not all the candidates for Senate will be debating

Now that a final schedule of televised debates for Connecticut's Senate race seems to be coalescing, it is becoming clear to the two independent candidates on the ballot that they are not going to be included.

Warren Mosler, the exotic car manufacturer who petitioned his way onto the ballot as the candidate for the The Independent Party, sent out a cheery press release last week saying he had been accepted by the vetting committee of the League of Women Voters to be included in their Senate debates.

Alas, a spokesman for the group explained to me this week that it is having a hard time getting commitments from other candidates and a broadcast television partner.

So far, there are officially no televised League of Women Voters Senate debates for Mosler to be included in.

I suspect, from what I heard from the league, that the major party candidates, Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican Linda McMahon, would not want to participate in a debate in which they would share the stage with the two minority party candidates who are also on the ballot.

John Mertens, who is running as the Connecticut for Lieberman candidate (he and some other independents kind of hijacked the party and its ballot access from Lieberman, who created it for his successful independent run in 2006) was still hoping to be included in at least some of the debates when I spoke to him earlier this week.

But subsequent announcements by sponsors, including The Day, indicate he won't be invited to any of the three televised debates scheduled for Oct. 4, 7 and 12.

I felt sympathetic to some of the arguments Mertens made about being included.

A professor at Trinity College, Mertens, who also volunteers teaching in the public schools, strikes me as an interesting candidate, one who has given a lot of thought to policy issues.

"I could argue I'm working as hard as any candidate," said Martens, who points out that he has public access television shows airing all over Connecticut, has placed 20 million ads on Facebook, attends two to three campaign events every day and has posted 30 detailed position papers on his Web site.

"Who says I am not a serious candidate?" he said.

Mertens also bristles at the notion that the League of Women Voters, which left him out of its hypothetical debates, at the same time it included Mosler, uses money raised by a candidate as a criteria for being included.

After all, he notes, Linda McMahon is writing herself checks. He's right. That doesn't prove any broad base of support.

Mosler is another checkbook candidate, a wealthy individual who apparently has gone this far in the race based on the money spent on a petition drive and donating to his own campaign.

It was largely his own donations that allowed him to pass the league's vetting committee threshold.

I feel less worried about his not being included in the debates.

Mosler, until recently, was living in St. Croix, participating in a U.S. program allowing island-based residents to avoid U.S. income taxes.

It may have all been legal. But I doubt voters would take much stock in a hedge fund manager who chose to live in the Virgin Islands in what would look to some like a tax dodge, no matter how much they like his policies on the economy.

Mosler does have some interesting positions on the economy, which even Mertens says are impressive. Mosler, for instance, believes the country needs to spend its way out of the recession, a stark contrast, for sure, to the fiscal conservancy McMahon is sure to espouse at the debates.

Mertens says he is disappointed but not surprised by the content of everything said so far in the campaign by both major candidates. He said the majority of people he has spoken to would support another choice.

That brings him to another unfairness of this election. He and Mosler, even though they are both on the ballot, are not included in major polling.

"People are eager for an alternative. They know we exist," he said.

This is the opinion of David Collins.