Bill Hemmer will be on Miami Valley’s Morning News at 8:15 a.m. Thursday on AM 1290 and News 95.7.
When the 17 Republicans vying to be the GOP nominee convene in Cleveland for the first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign Thursday night, Cincinnati native Bill Hemmer will be among the Fox hosts holding their feet to the fire.
Hemmer, a cohost of “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News, will host the first debate at 5 p.m. EST — that’s the debate of between the seven candidates polling the lowest in the field.
The other 10 candidates — a group that includes Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the other nine candidates at the top of the polls — will wait until prime time for their chance. The second debate is scheduled for 8:50 p.m. and hosted by Fox news anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. Both debates will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.
At 50, it’s the first time Hemmer has hosted a debate, though he reported on both the 2008 and 2012 elections. He and his debate cohost, Martha MacCallum, have spent the days leading up to the first debate going over questions. “I’ve decided it’s time to fall in love with your favorite questions,” he said. “And fall out of love with everything else.”
Their debate will last an hour. It’s the first time that many viewers will get the chance to hear the candidates address specific issues. Every minute will count.
“The way I look at it is, this is the foundation, the beginning,” he said. “It’s a launching pad for the fight for the Republican nomination. It is arguably the political event of the summer.”
That said, there will be other debates. A candidate who doesn’t make the most out of Thursday has another chance in September, when the next debate is planned and every month after that until March. “There will be more opportunities,” he said.
Hemmer is currently the co-host of FOX News Channel’s America’s Newsroom weekdays from 9 to 11 a.m. He’s covered everything from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to the Boston Marathon bombing as well as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Before joining Fox News Channel, Hemmer served as an anchor of both CNN Live Today and CNN Tonight.
For Hemmer, the debate will be something of a homecoming. He grew up in Ohio, attending Elder High School in Cincinnati and going to Miami University for college. After college, he worked as a sportscaster and producer at a local NBC Cincinnati TV station — TV host Jerry Springer was an anchor at the time — and then Hemmer became weekend sports anchor for WCPO-TV in Cincinnati.
Sports, he found, was a beat not too different from politics. “Campaigns are as close as we come to sports,” he said. “There are winners and losers and strategies on both sides.”
Ohio, he said, is an ideal state to give viewers their first look at the 17 candidates running.
“You have urban, rural, suburban, you have city life, you have white Americans, you have African Americans, all sorts of issues crisscross through that state,” he said. “The demographics are all there to get. I think that’s why we get drawn back toward it again and again.”
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