(Oct. 24, 2004) -- Steve Kuykendall and Betty Karnette, the respective Republican and Democrat candidates seeking to represent the Long Beach/San Pedro/Palos Verdes area in the state Assembly for the next two years, have debated under the auspices of the League of Women Voters.

The debate took place on October 19 at the Rolling Hills Public Library. LBReport.com attended and provides our readers with extended audio coverage below. Our coverage is virtually unedited. (Lengthy pauses between audience speakers, inaudible portions and the like were removed and are detailed below.)

The 54th Assembly district encompasses much of LB, plus Signal Hill, San Pedro, Palos Verdes & Avalon. It has been represented since 1998 by Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat, who is term limited in the Assembly and seeking the Long Beach area state Senate seat currently held by Karnette.

State Senator Karnette, a Democrat, is term limited in the Senate (1996-2004) and seeking the Assembly seat held by Lowenthal.

A former teacher, she held the Assembly seat from 1992 through 1994 before being beaten by Mr. Kuykendall, a Republican.

Mr. Kuykendall, a former Mayor/Councilmember in Rancho Palos Verdes, held the Assembly seat from 1994 through 1998.

In 1998, Assemblyman Kuykendall was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and represented the area in Washington, D.C. from early 1999 to early 2001.

Our streaming audio coverage of this event is brought to you by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce political action committee. The LB Area Chamber PAC has endorsed Mr. Kuykendall. It has placed no conditions or restrictions on our coverage. To borrow a phrase from NPR, LBReport.com (which pioneered the use of streaming audio coverage of newsworthy actions by the LB Redevelopment Agency Board and LB Unified School District Board) is solely responsible for our content.

The League of Women Voters event, moderated by Mary Ellen Barnes, Ph.D., was open to the public and attended by various media outlets. The League is not sponsoring or otherwise involved with our coverage.

Our audio coverage is unedited except for removal of some pauses between audience questions; deletion of audience members' names and shortening of inaudible questions (which are reiterated by the moderator). Twenty seconds of Mr. Kuykendall's closing statement near its conclusion were lost when our audio mini disc reached capacity; we switched to a new one as quickly as possible. We indicated all audio edits by inserting a "whoosh" sound. A Libertarian party candidate did not attend.]