Final Preparations Underway at Pavilion : City Council Donates $25,000 for Debate

As workers transformed UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion into a giant television studio Wednesday for tonight’s final presidential debate, the Los Angeles City Council, spurred by civic pride and partisan politics, donated $25,000 to the event.

The council’s welcome for the cash-poor sponsors of the final debate between Vice President George Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis was not without a sharp debate of its own.

Ruth Galanter, one of two dissenting council members, suggested that a bipartisan commission sponsoring the event since the pullout of the League of Women Voters last week ought to pick up the tab itself. The council previously had agreed to contribute $25,000 to the league, but that sponsoring group withdrew, complaining that restrictive rules for staging the debate agreed upon by the candidates amounted to a “fraud.”

Cites ‘Spin Doctors’

“I liked it when the debates were sponsored by the League of Women Voters,” Galanter said. “Now that it’s a debate sponsored by the ‘spin doctors,’ I think they ought to pay for them.”

Spin doctors are those officials close to the respective campaigns who give their own assessment, or spin, to how a candidate performs.

The council contribution was approved by 11 council members. It brings to $325,000 the funding in hand for the debate, about $175,000 short of costs, said Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

At UCLA, the school has donated the use of Pauley Pavilion for the debate, Brown said. Some 1,900 invited guests of the candidates and the commission will attend.

The red, white and blue debate podium, used for last month’s first presidential debate as well as the one last week between the running mates, had been erected at center court, under eight national championship banners won by Bruin basketball teams.

Install Telephones

Workers had installed 37 miles of cable and 412 telephones for media hookups. A nearby auditorium to be used as media headquarters was filled with 96 tables for reporters.

In the pavilion, a sound technician in cutoffs and an orange tank top subbed for an NBC reporter as cameramen sought the right angle. Six UCLA students impersonated the candidates and the moderator and questioners as specialists worked on staging, lights and sound.

At a master sound panel high above the pavilion floor, technician Don Helvey, working his third debate this season, predicted no problems.

“This is lightweight, compared to stuff we normally do, like the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl, and Michael Jackson videos,” Helvey said.

Outside the pavilion, in a sound truck which all four networks will use, Laurence Estrin, of Anaheim-based Best Audio, was putting the system through its final paces.

“This is good solid engineering and a lot of backup,” Estrin said. For instance, Estrin said the microphone in front of each candidate is in fact made up of four separate devices, each capable of replacing the others in the event of a failure.

Helps With Adjustments

The man who designed the adjustable lecterns for the candidates, New York set designer Hugh Raisky, was helping put the last adjustments to the debate stage.

Last month in North Carolina, Bush, at 6 feet 2 inches tall, agreed following negotiations to have his lectern lowered from the maximum height of 48 inches to 44 inches.

Dukakis, at 5 feet 8 inches, reportedly used a small riser the first time around to even things off.

“I don’t think I should tell what the candidates are planning,” Raisky said when asked about stage tactics for the final debate today.