Dennis Kucinich frequently refused to debate challengers in Congressional elections

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2940

NY1 Silences Debate
Refuses to allow Clinton challenger Tasini in television primary debate

NY1's criteria reflect the undemocratic way in which media outlets measure the seriousness of a candidacy. By the station's rules, a candidate's popularity with the public is meaningless without hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign funding. But without the exposure that debates provide, grassroots candidates running on a shoestring budget have little chance of communicating their positions to the majority of voters—people whom deep-pocketed rivals can reach easily through advertising campaigns and media coverage from mainstream media gatekeepers who have sanctioned those candidates as legitimate.

As writer/activist Barbara Ehrenreich said at a Tasini campaign forum protesting the exclusion (Village Voice, 8/2/06), "When you have to have half a million dollars to tell people what you stand for, then we're not talking about democracy anymore, we're talking about plutocracy."

The League of Women Voters, which for many years served as the main sponsor of national and local debates, requires only that a candidate has met the legal standard for getting on the ballot—in this case, 15,000 signatures. Tasini received 40,000 signatures, placing him well over that mark.