In the town hall style presidential debate on Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may be asked a question about credit unions.
If the question is asked, it will be a huge score for the industry, CUNA and its members, which have been working since the presidential primaries to get the attention of the candidates through the trade organization’s “Strong Credit Unions, Strong Middle Class.” national campaign.
Richard Gose, CUNA’s chief political officer, said the purpose of the CUNA campaign was to make sure the Democratic and Republican candidates – as they were developing their domestic economic policies – would often hear about credit unions’ critical role in supporting and growing the middle class that fuels much of the nation’s economic activity.
Likewise, NAFCU President/CEO Dan Berger said that the national trade organization met with both presidential campaigns over the summer seeking the candidates’ support for credit unions and their members. Berger also wrote letters to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in August thanking them for their positions to address regulatory burdens.
The credit union question has received more than 4,000 votes as of Wednesday afternoon, and that number is increasing frequently, according to the Open Debate Coalition. The organization, founded in 2008 by a group of progressives, conservatives and Silicon Valley leaders, is welcoming questions from the public to pose to the presidential candidates.
The questions that receive the most votes will be given to the moderators, Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of “This Week” at ABC, and Anderson Cooper, anchor at CNN, who will choose which questions to ask. Given that the Wells Fargo fraud fiasco recently received a lot of national press coverage, the credit union question may have a good chance of being asked.
The credit union question was posted by Lynda P. from Ohio: “Is there an alternative to the big banks on Wall Street? What will you do to grow the community banks and credit unions on Main Street?”
To cast your vote for the credit union question, copy and paste presidentialopenquestions.com/questions/3983/vote/ into your internet browser address bar.
More insights about how CUNA and NAFCU have been working to get the next president’s attention will be featured in the Oct. 12, 2016 print edition of CU Times.
