Last night, I attended the Monday Night Rumble organized by the Mertens for U.S. Senate campaign. Many of my friends from Social Web Week and other social media activities in Connecticut were there and some helped organize the event. I’ve been offering suggestions to them about using social media to promote civic engagement and it seemed like the Monday Night Rumble would be a good way to watch the debate.

At various points during the debate, they would mute the television projected on a large screen in the back of the upper room of Anna Liffey’s in New Haven. Mertens would provide his answers to the questions that McMahon and Blumenthal had been asked. As a general rule, they seemed much more intelligent than the responses coming across the television.

There was also a screen up in the corner of the room showing a twitter feed of the #ctsen hashtag. Unfortunately, the font was too small on the screen for me to easily see from where I was sitting. Instead, I checked tweets on my cellphone.

The best tweet of the evening went to Helen Ubinas:

Um. What with Linda McMahon's heavy breathing before every question? Half expect her to say, "Dick. I am your mother." #ctsen#debate

Paul Bass’ live blogging the debate also particularly stands out.

State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield also provided some great tweeting of the debate. His tweets included:

That death penalty question hit me in the gut #ctdem

Gary has been a leading voice for doing away with the death penalty. Sitting in Anna Liffey’s, a block away from where Steven Hayes is being tried, John Mertens differed from both Blumenthal and McMahon on the death penalty. They both support it, Mertens gave a good explanation of why he does not support it.

At the end, Gary said,

Ah screw it...neither candidate decisively beat the other so stop saying one or the other put the smackdown #ctsen

Just about every debate ends with the most fervent supporters of each candidate saying their candidate won the debate. I tend to agree with Gary. Neither candidate on the stage in Hartford decisively beat the other, but the debate did include more than just two sides. McMahon also talked about issues as being two sided. I tweeted:

McMahon wants bipartisan discussion about #hcr. I guess she doesn't want unaffiliated voters in the discussion or supporting her. #ctsen

Several friends in different minor parties retweeted this.

Warren Mosler, the other too often overlooked U.S. Senate candidate who will be on the ballot in Connecticut this November also attended the Monday Night rumble. After the debate, he was given a chance to respond to both John and to the major party candidates. There was a serious discussion about the issues, in which various members of the audience also participated.

The Mertens campaign plans to have continued debate parties like this as long as all the candidates are not allowed to participate. All in all, the Monday Rumble demonstrated that people who believe Attorney General Blumenthal has a serious opponent in this race are wrong. Actually, he has two serious opponents, John Mertens and Warren Mosler.

Back home, I stumbled across the article in the Hartford Courant announcing that Jeff Levine’s position as Senior Vice President of Content at The Hartford Courant and Fox CT has been eliminated.

One can only surmise that CT1 Media is now being a little more upfront about doing away with any valuable content. It fits with the way they ran the debate. Perhaps this is in preparation for the paper and television station to be sold to WWE.

My recommendation to Mr. Levine? Start taking steroids and perhaps you can become an independent contractor to that small business in Stamford that is creating ‘jobs’.