Candidates Night

Every April, the Foxboro Jaycees hold Candidates Night cablecast LIVE from the Foxboro Cable Access Studio at 7 p.m. on public access channels Comcast 8/Verizon 39. Members of the local press will be on hand to pose questions of interest to the various individuals who are running for elected office in the Foxborough Town Election in May.

In addition to the live cablecast, the program will be repeated numerous times; exact dates and times will be listed in the Program Schedule which runs alternately with programming in the Channel 8/39 Bulletin Board, and can also be found on the FCA website: http://www.fcatv.org by using the interactive Program Guide. The Jaycees Candidates Night program will also be available in the Video Gallery for viewing any time on the FCA website.

Each year, the Foxboro Jaycees host a forum at Foxboro Cable Access to allow each candidate for the upcoming election (selectman, school board, town clerk, board of health, housing authority, etc.) to speak to the public, and introduce or re-introduce themselves. Candidates in CONTESTED races (that is, more than one person running in a specific race) take questions from local media and and express their qualifications and reasons for running for office. The forum is broadcast live and rebroadcast repeatedly up to Election Day.

A Jaycee moderates the event. The candidates in contested races will will take questions from the media. All other candidates for uncontested races have been invited to participate and make a five minute statement.

The Jaycees are proud to present this forum so that the voters of Foxboro have an opportunity to meet the candidates running for public office, and to hear their views on the issues that are relevant to the positions that they are seeking.

The Foxboro Jaycees as an organization cannot and will not endorse any particular candidate, nor can we espouse a particular political point of view. This is specifically prohibited in our chapter by-laws. However, since one of the strengths of the Jaycees is to provide leadership training, it should come as no surprise that many of our members are currently serving the community on a variety of town boards. Any actions or views expressed by the candidates are the views of those individual citizens, and do not reflect the views of the Foxboro Jaycees as an organization.

The forum generally follows this structure:

Candidates in UNCONTESTED races make a five minute statement (and do not take questions from the media)

Candidates in CONTESTED races:

Each candidate will be allowed to start with a brief introductory statement that shall not exceed three minutes.
The candidates will then be asked a series of questions from our local journalists.

The order in which the candidates speak and in which the panelists ask the questions is determined by a random drawing.
Candidates will have two minutes to answer each question after which the reporter may ask a follow-up question.
If a follow-up question is asked, the candidate will have one minute to answer the follow-up question.

Immediately after the question and answer period for a group, each candidate will have two minutes to make closing remarks.

Candidates will be advised of time constraints off camera. Warnings will be given to them as their time is close to running out.

It is our hope that information in this broadcast will enable the voter to make a more informed decision at the polls.