President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will each participate in a "Meet the Candidate" event with Univision next week. The company is hosting, along with Facebook, a discussion about education and the future of the Hispanic community.
Romney will be participating in the conversation with Univision News on Sept. 19 while Obama's event will take place on Sept. 20. Both events will be streamed online in English and will be televised on the Univision Network at 10 p.m. ET/PT on each night. The "Meet the Candidates" events will both take place in front of a live audience at the University of Miami BankUnited Center Field-house.
"Hispanics will play a key role in electing the next President of the United States and these events will help address key issues so that the more than 20 million Hispanics expected to vote this year can make an informed decision," Cesar Conde, president, Univision Networks, said. "We are pleased that both President Obama and Governor Romney understand the importance of sharing their vision with Hispanic Americans, a group that is younger and more active in social media than the average citizen, and whose influence in U.S. politics continues to grow. By partnering with Facebook and the University of Miami, we are further bringing access to these candidates to an incredibly important segment of the population."
The conversations will be moderated by Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, the anchors of Univision's national evening newscast "Noticiero Univision."
The decisions to host the discussions came after Ramos was denied a chance to host one of the Commission on Presidential Debates' four events.
"What happened is the commission is stuck in the 1950s. And that has to change," Ramos said in an interview with NPR's Michel Martin. "The commission decided that two men and two women were going to be the moderators for the debates, and I really thought it was incredible, truly incredible, that they didn't choose a Hispanic journalist to be part of the debates."
The commission has announced that the moderators for the presidential debates will be PBS's Jim Lehrer on Oct. 3; CNN's Candy Crowley on Oct. 16; and CBS's Bob Schieffer on Oct. 22. The vice presidential debate on Oct. 11 will be moderated by Martha Raddatz of ABC.
"They do get the fact that either they appeal to Latinos or they'll lose the election," Ramos said. "The Hispanic community right now, we're about 50 million. In 40 years, it's going to be 125 million. And we're changing everything. It's truly a demographic revolution."
Ramos said he plans to ask Romney about his 'self-deportation' idea; why he is against immigration reform; why he opposes the DREAM Act; why in the platform, [Republicans] are for building a new fence between Mexico and the United States.
For President Barack Obama, Ramos plans to ask why he broke a major electoral promise when he said in 2008 that he was going to present an immigration proposal during his first year in office and why the president has deported more immigrants than any other president in the history of the United States - more than 1.2 million immigrants.
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