The first of five upcoming candidate forums involving the Assembly's 47th District will be held Thursday, kicking off a new phase of the election season a month before primary elections.

The 47th District has seven candidates on the primary ballot. Four Republicans, two Democrats and an Independent are vying to succeed Eugene Hahn in the district after Hahn announced he was not running for a 10th term.

The forums will be held in Cambria, DeForest, Lodi, Madison and the town of Windsor. All except a pair of party-specific Lodi forums will be open to all registered candidates.

The Cambria Kiwanis Club is holding its first-ever candidate forum Aug. 27, and Madison Area Technical College in Madison is organizing its first primary event Aug. 28.

Rita Burmania, a member of the Cambria Kiwanis Club, said the group decided to organize a forum for the first time after one of the 47th District candidates, Republican Tim McCumber, asked to talk to the group.

"Just by the very nature of our club, we're not political," Burmania said. "But we are about informing the public, so we thought about inviting everyone."

A subcommittee of the Kiwanis group is scheduled to meet Wednesday to decide the questions posed to the candidates. How many questions are asked depends on how many attend, Burmania said.

"If all seven candidates come, it won't be so many questions asked," Burmania added.

At MATC's Truax Campus, students and faculty typically organize a candidate forum prior to the general election for the 16 Assembly and four Senate districts the campus covers. But this year, the school opted to hold a primary event also, meaning a potential of 50 candidates could be involved, MATC spokeswoman Paula Symons said.

"It's quite a big field," Symons said. "We're going to be heavy into time-keeping."

The event will be moderated by a student, and candidates will get prepared questions ahead of time. The event also will feature an audience question-and-answer session.

The first of the five forums will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Windsor Town Hall, 4084 Mueller Road. The town asked the Dane County League of Women Voters to moderate the session.

Two forums are being held in Lodi by the city's Optimists Club: 12:30 p.m. Aug. 20 at the Northern Edge Restaurant, N1430 Highway 113, for Democrats and Aug. 27 at the same time and place for Republicans.

The DeForest community is inviting all 47th District candidates to a forum at 6 p.m. Aug. 26 at the DeForest Area Public Library, 203 Library St. The Cambria Kiwanis forum is 7 p.m. Aug. 27 at the Cambria Community Room, 115 W. Edgewater St.

The MATC forum will be held at 11 a.m. Aug. 28 at the Truax Campus, 3550 Anderson St., in Madison.

The four Republicans running for the 47th District seat are McCumber, town administrator for the town of Merrimac; Portage School Board member Steven Pate of the town of Pacific; Keith Ripp, a town of Dane supervisor and president of the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board; and Erich Ruth, a DeForest Village Board member.

The Democrats are Paul Fisk, Lodi's former mayor, and former Columbus School Board President Trish O'Neil.

Dennis Hruby, a former farmer and teacher who lives in the township of Dane, is running as an Independent.

The partisan primary will be held Sept. 9. The general election will be held Nov. 4.

The 47th Assembly District includes parts of Columbia County - with the exception of Portage, Wyocena, Pardeeville, Wisconsin Dells and the towns of Wyocena, Marcellon, Fort Winnebago, Lewiston, Caledonia and Newport. It also includes the northwest corner and the northern towns of Dane County and a small portion of Sauk County.

mcall@capitalnewspapers.com

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