We’d like to start by thanking our former colleagues over at the Review-Journal’s editorial page for the big-time name check in today’s newspaper. It was awfully nice of them to remember us, and we’re delighted to find that they’re readers of this very blog! Various Things & Stuff coffee mugs to you guys, just as soon as we get our government bailout and can afford some.

We’d also like to say that we totally agree with the point that was made in that editorial: Nevada’s Democrats are saying some awfully mean things about state Sens. Bob Beers and Joe Heck, some of which are untrue, as pieces in both the R-J and, earlier, the Las Vegas Sun, have demonstrated.

But saying mean and untrue things is, unfortunately, part of politics, and Beers and Heck are big boys. So far, they have been able to deftly handle the fliers, paid for by the Nevada Democratic Party, and not by Allison Copening or Shirley Breeden, their respective Democratic opponents.

What seems clear at this point is that both Copening and Breeden have a strategy, which is this: Lay very low, let other people go on the attack for you, say as little as possibly publicly that could come back to bite you and pray like hell that Barack Obama brings enough Democrats to the polls to get us elected.

And, in our humble opinion, that’s no way to run for office.

We happen to have been asked to moderate a candidate’s debate Oct. 16 at Summerlin’s Temple Beth Shalom. (It’s open to the public, people!) One of the races that the debate’s organizers have on the agenda is Beers’s state Senate district, and the incumbent has kindly agreed to attend.

Copening has not.

We’ve e-mailed her to ask why, and she very politely told us that she’s already done one debate, has agreed to do another with Nevada Week in Review’s Mitch Fox, and has turned down all other requests. Better, she says, to meet voters in walking door-to-door than to spend time in debate prep. And it’s Copening’s absolute right to decline the invitation.

But let us just gently suggest that if she really wants to reach voters, she can do more in one night at a debate than in a week of walking. And if you’re prepping for one debate, you’re prepping for them all, right?

Perhaps it’s the fact that Copening (and Breeden) haven’t exactly received rave reviews in their interviews and the one debate they’ve both attended thus far. We said it was the worst performance we’ve ever seen in 20 years of covering politics, in fact. And it surely was.

Still, politics is a lot like show business, and from what we can tell, in show business, the only way you can follow up a really bad performance is with a really good one. Just ask John Travolta (Battlefield Earth/Swordfish). So you looked like you had no business being anywhere near a ballot in your first debate! So what? There’s always the second! And the third! Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford the first time. Did he let that stop him? Hell no!

Plus, there’s the whole notion that if you’re seeking to represent people, you have an ethical and moral obligation to appear before them in forums like debates and allow them to see you in action. Otherwise, they have every right to think you’ve got something to hide.

We’re just saying.

So we’d like to publicly encourage Copening (and every other candidate out there) to study up, and show up, at each candidate’s night, debate, TV interview, and every other forum to which they’re invited between now and Election Day. It’s good for the public, it’s good for democracy, and it’s great fun, if you do it right.

Because there’s few things more ugly than that empty chair next to your opponent who gets to talk right through the time alloted for an absent opponent.