CNBC: Capital Report
31 August 2004
Interview: Chris Nowinski of World Wrestling Entertainment and Kit Hoover of ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" discuss the convention from the perspective of younger voters
ALAN MURRAY, co-host:
Welcome back to CAPITAL REPORT. The coverage of this political convention isn't limited to the traditional political junkies. We're joined now for some `unconventional' convention coverage by ESPN's Kit Hoover. She's the hostess of "Cold Pizza"; also a graduate of the University of North Carolina.
Ms. KIT HOOVER (ESPN2 "Cold Pizza"): Up top, Alan ...(unintelligible).
MURRAY: I'm sorry, Chris. We knew we were going to do that.
Mr. CHRIS NOWINSKI (World Wrestling Entertainment): All UNC talk.
MURRAY: And Chris Nowinski of World Wrestling Entertainment. Now last time I saw you guys was in Boston. Chris, how does this compare to what happened in Boston?
Mr. NOWINSKI: It's--a lot of it's similar, you know. It's interesting to see the Republican young people are a lot more organized, and you know what? The Democrats or the non-Republicans are a lot more organized on the street. There's a lot of energy in this group, and it's going to be interesting to see when they get out the vote, you know, will they get another 10 percent this fall there, 'cause there's a lot of love and a lot of energy in this room and outside the building.
MURRAY: Does `get out the vote'--'cause I know both of you were involved in this effort to sort of get more people out and get them engaged--does that help both parties equally, or does it tilt one way or the other?
Ms. HOOVER: I think it helps both parties equally. We had a guy on yesterday, 18 years old, has a book that just came out all about getting young people involved. MTV has Rock the Vote--the main message is we don't care who you vote for; if you're young, just get out there and cast your vote.
MURRAY: Because the traditional thinking has been higher turnout would probably help Democrats more than Republicans.
Mr. NOWINSKI: Yeah, it seems to me like we're getting about 50/50, you know. We're successful registering everywhere, and it's about the same.
MURRAY: Yeah.
Mr. NOWINSKI: Yeah.
MURRAY: Kit, what did you think of last night? Rudy Giuliani, John McCain?
Ms. HOOVER: I thought it was magical. I thought McCain came alive, but Rudy Giuliani stole the show. I loved how they opened it with the "Saturday Night Live" theme, that opening night. I think it's been magical; they got good tunes here, don't you think, Alan?
MURRAY: Pretty good music. Well, this is good.
Ms. HOOVER: Yeah. Yeah. We could shag to this.
MURRAY: This is good. This is more coming--I don't think the camera could catch us shagging, and Chris is tired of all this North Carolina talk.
Ms. HOOVER: Chris is...
Mr. NOWINSKI: Oh, no. Yeah. And the speeches last night, you know, I didn't like the negativity. Young people need to be inspired by talking about the issues. I want to hear about what's going to happen in the future, not about what happened 30 years ago. And it seems like that's what we're focused on.
MURRAY: But in a political campaign, you really have to draw a contrast between the candidates, don't you? I mean, a certain amount of negativity is inevitable in a campaign.
Mr. NOWINSKI: Absolutely. And that's going to happen. But even the media coverage with the Michael Moore stuff and the swift boats. You know, you go to the other news channels--other than this one--this one, you guys are talking to us, so this is great.
Ms. HOOVER: Politically correct.
Mr. NOWINSKI: But the other ones--we're just not getting any information that's going to help us choose which...
MURRAY: Yeah.
Mr. NOWINSKI: ...candidate that we want to vote for.
Ms. HOOVER: We're doing something interesting. We're looking at the political candidates' resumes--their sports resumes.
MURRAY: Oh, yeah?
Ms. HOOVER: And we're going to compare Bush and Cheney to the Kerry-Edwards ticket. So on ESPN, we're sort of doing a different genre to look at that--how sports plays into it.
MURRAY: And what are you finding?
Ms. HOOVER: Well, I think the Edwards-Kerry ticket's going to be a pretty hard one to go up against from the sports perspective of it, but you know, President Bush went a sub-seven-minute mile, and tomorrow we're going to look at Cheney's sports resume, a couple of his high school buddies, so it could be a pretty good toss-up.
MURRAY: All right. Well, great to have you back. Chris Nowinski, Kit Hoover, we'll get you back again before the end of the week. Thanks a lot for being with us.
Ms. HOOVER: Thanks, Alan.
Mr. NOWINSKI: Wonderful. Thank you.
MURRAY: Good to see you.
Stay with us. We're going to come back in just a moment with an update from the convention floor. You're watching a special edition of CAPITAL REPORT. Don't go away.
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