What did it take for UC Davis to host the Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman debate?

The answer can be found in the numbers — in the number of people, amount of time and resources employed to host the first-ever gubernatorial debate at the university.  All of the hard work was on televised display Tuesday night (Sept. 28) under the bright lights of the Mondavi Center’s Jackson Hall.

To ensure the one-hour event ran smoothly, staff from across campus — communications, police and emergency services, special events, the Mondavi Center, grounds and transportation — and representatives from the campaigns and sponsoring media outlets collaborated on the logistics for more than three months. On the academic side of things, faculty experts engaged in a predebate forum at the law school.

For an idea of what goes into organizing a major political debate in California that attracted media attention nationwide, consider these numbers:

$19 billion — California budget deficit

608 million — estimated combined audience for debate coverage in 826 news reports in media outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and National Public Radio 

16.9 million — registered voters in California

6.5 million — Californians who are eligible to vote but not registered, or about 28 percent

2 million — estimated number of people who watched the debate on television, according to KCRA-TV, which co-sponsored the debate and broadcast it in the Sacramento region. Among all TVs in use in the region at 6 p.m., the debate was showing on a quarter of them, KCRA's Jim Stimson said. KCRA also fed the video to other outlets, among them the San Francisco Bay Area's KTVU-TV and Los Angeles' KABC-TV. According to Stimson, KTVU drew more viewers at 6 p.m. than all of the competing news broadcasts combined, and KABC scored one of the biggest 6 p.m. audiences it had had for a long time.

$70,000 — the university's expenses to put on the debate, with UC Davis paying about $45,000 and its co-sponsors, KCRA, Capital Public Radio and The Sacramento Bee chipping in about $8,000 each.

21,000 — number of log-ons for the debate's live stream on debate.ucdavis.edu

17,436 — hits the day of the debate on the university’s debate website.

2,000 — number of fliers that Transportation and Parking Services, or TAPS, placed on car windshields in the south entry parking garage the day before the event, to advise that the garage would be closed for nondebate parking the next morning and afternoon

1,000 — feet of cable used for wireless Internet access in the Mondavi Center

952 — seats available in Jackson Hall

661 — log-ons for the webcast of the Debate Watch Forum at the School of Law, where a panel of political experts offered suggestions and insights on what to watch and listen for

540 — number of sweet treats (45 dozen) given out by UC Davis to people who worked on the debate:

• Media — brownies, lemon bars, gourmet cookies (milk chocolate chunk, white chocolate macadamia nut, peanut butter, double chocolate chunk and oatmeal), Jelly Bellies and mini candy bars
• Security — donuts, muffins, coffee, tea, water, pizza, fruit, sodas, sandwiches, chips, Jelly Bellies and mini candy bars
• Production crew and staff — gourmet cookies
• Candidates and staffs — brownies, biscotti and madeleine cookies

300-plus — number of calls from the media, debate-related, fielded by the UC Davis News Service in the week before the debate

250 — estimated number of demonstrators on Vanderhoef Quad across from the Mondavi Center

240 — number of feet of heavy rubber covers put in place to protect TV cables where they ran across Old Davis Road

132 — credentials given to press and broadcast media from three continents: North America (including The Globe and Mail of Toronto), Europe (Der Spiegel and the European Press Photo Agency) and Asia (Sing Tao Daily of Hong Kong)

125 — seats for the Debate Watch Forum in King Hall

105 — workspaces in the combination media filing and “spin” room, in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre next door to Jackson Hall

60 — minutes of the debate

45 — KCRA employees who staged and produced the broadcast from the Mondavi Center

43 — Mondavi Center employees who staffed the debate

22 — radio stations broadcasting the debate across the state

20.2 — percentage of Californians who decline to state their party affiliation, up from 10.3 percent in 1994

18 — number of TV production trucks (there were 15 other media vehicles as well)

18 — number of volunteer ushers scheduled for the debate

16 — distance in feet between the candidates' podiums

15 — Mondavi Center walk-throughs, by the candidates’ teams, UC Davis police, and representatives of TV stations and other groups

12 — UC Davis students who worked with KCRA's Truth Team, which performed instant fact-checking during the debate

12 — number of news releases sent by the Brown and Whitman campaigns during the actual debate, according to the Los Angeles Times

12 — number of antennas installed along the catwalk inside the media filing-spin room to support govnet, a wireless network created by Communications Resources for the media

11 — outdoor TV location set-ups for live reports

11 — number of TV stations that carried the debate: KCRA, Sacramento; KTVU (Fox) and KQED-TV (PBS) in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area; KSBW-TV (NBC) in the Salinas-Monterey area; KSBY-TV (NBC) in the San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles area; KNVN-TV (NBC) in the Chico-Redding area; KSEE-TV (NBC) in the Fresno-Visalia area; KGET-TV (NBC) in Bakersfield; KABC (ABC) in Los Angeles; KNSD-TV (NBC) in San Diego; and KMIR-TV (NBC) in Palm Springs

10-12 — TAPS personnel who worked traffic control

10 — TAPS signs, two of them electronic

8 — UC Davis experts available to the media to comment on the 2010 elections

6 — expert participants in the Debate Watch Forum 

6 — viewing parties on and off campus: Graduate School of Management; ArtLounge in the Memorial Union; Student Housing (Segundo and Tercero); The Colleges at La Rue; and Bistro 33 in downtown Davis

5 — UC regents in attendance: Russ Gould, chairman; George Keiffer, regent; Rex Hime, alumni regent; Jessie Cheng, student regent; and Alfred Mireles, student regent designate

4 — numbers of years in a governor’s term; a governor can serve only two terms

4 — debate news releases distributed by the UC Davis News Service

4 — sponsors: Capital Public Radio, KCRA, The Sacramento Bee and UC Davis (plus two Southern California partners: Southern California Public Radio and La Opinión)

4 a.m. — time when the first TV news crews began setting up outside the Mondavi Center

3 — debate panelists

3 — COWs: cellular-on-wheels trucks and trailers with portable antennas, to provide enhanced phone coverage

2 — road closures: Mrak Hall Drive and Alumni Lane

1 — bomb sweep of the Mondavi Center with the use of bomb-sniffing dogs

1 — general election on Nov. 2 to decide who gets sworn in as California’s next governor on Jan. 5

More about the debate

Debate Day from start to finish

Forum panelists discuss the debate’s potential impacts

‘A major plus for the campus’

The university's debate website, which includes videos of the debate and the Debate Watch Forum

And another debate next week

School of Law to host attorney general candidates for an Oct. 5 debate