and i am the news director, judy phillips, and i will be moderating tonight's debate. joining me are our panelists. and of course, we -- we have our candidates. we invited a third candidate, but he did not respond to our invitation. if we did not invite the green party candidate because he did not qualify under the inclusion guidelines. let's get started. we begin with the opening statements, the order of which was determined by a coin toss and ms. correne will go first. >> thank you very much. thanks for hosting this event. i decided to run for congress because i believe our government is taking our country in the wrong direction. i grew up living in the american dream of. i came from a middle-class family. my parents did not have college degrees. if we had no special privileges or talents. we just worked really hard. we had some great people working alongside us and we were able to be successful. i remember delivering phone books with my friends as a kid. i used to proofread the phone pages in the graveyard shift. after going to college and getting an mba, i came bac