Never mind what kind of sparks might fly here between President Bush and his 2004 general election opponent if Nashville lands a coveted presidential debate. The debate opponents right now in this city are the ones competing to host the candidates (and, presumably, moderator Jim Lehrer). As it turns out, two of the 14 site proposals the Commission on Presidential Debates is considering are in Nashville. And now the question is which team—Vanderbilt University and the city, which are partners in one proposal, or Belmont University, which is also vying to be a host—stands a better shot.

“My fear is the commission will take the political route—instead of making one mad and one happy, it would just make them both equally miserable and go somewhere else,” says Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips, a former Vanderbilt official who’s wanted Nashville to host a presidential debate since he arrived here in 1993.

Phillips doesn’t mind saying—over and over, actually—that he’s displeased Belmont threw its hat into the ring without first calling the mayor’s office, which has been working with Vanderbilt on a proposal for about four years. Asked whether he will urge Belmont to withdraw its application, he says, “We have not made that request,” though he adds, “It would be helpful” and that “one could hope.”

On the question of asking Belmont to withdraw, Michael Schoenfeld, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for public affairs and its debate point person, says, “I’m going to decline to answer that.”

Belmont proposes to hold the debate and accompanying media circus at its $50 million Curb Event Center and adjoining new student life complex, set to be completed Sept. 8, while the Vanderbilt/Metro coalition proposes Ryman Auditorium as the debate site and nearby Nashville Convention Center as its media center. The debate commission’s site selection crew has already visited both. They’re competing with, among other applicants, National Public Radio, Arizona State University, the University of Miami and the University of Kansas. By all accounts, neither Vanderbilt nor Belmont knew the other was interested in hosting a presidential debate, which involves raising about $750,000 to cover production costs and coordinating a host of city services. And now things are a little messy, particularly as Phillips sees it.

“It’s unfortunate this has happened. A couple of phone calls to the entity that you have to have to do this would probably have avoided all this,” he says of Belmont. To hit the point home, he adds, “If by chance Belmont got it, we would jump in and do what a city needs to do. But it’s very expensive to have city services.”

Asked if he means that the city would provide something for Vanderbilt that it wouldn’t for Belmont, he says only, “We haven’t been asked to partner with Belmont, so we’d have to look at what it would cost.”

Belmont president Bob Fisher is decidedly less cynical about the turn of events. “I honestly believe this has not hurt [Nashville’s] chances,” he says. “It doubles our chances. I have not and will not say a discouraging word about the Vanderbilt proposal. I think it would be terrific if they’re selected. I think the site they’ve chosen is one that would be of significant interest to the country, and if that’s what the commission’s looking for, they’ll choose that. If they’re looking for a venue like the Curb Event Center, they’ll choose that.”

Fisher says his vision for a presidential debate at Belmont dates back to the fall of 2000. “When Mike Curb made a $10 million donation to Belmont to build the Curb Event Center...I had told him on that very day, 'Wouldn’t it be great in the year 2004 to turn on your television and the guy comes on and he says, “Good evening. This is Jim Lehrer from the Curb Event Center on the campus of Belmont University. We bring you the third and final and pivotal debate in the presidential debates.” ’ ”

Over time, Fisher says, “We turned that into a real commitment that we would make an effort to do that. And we pretty naively just set out to do that on our own. The presidential debate commission didn’t tell us who was submitting. What are the odds when there are that few proposals that two would be from the same city?”

In April, about three days before the commission planned to issue its press release listing the potential sites, Fisher says he called the governor’s office, both Tennessee senators and the mayor’s office, among others.

“Certainly, we made that call notifying them,” he says. Until then, “Nobody checked with us, and we didn’t check with anybody else either. There was never a deliberate effort to compete with Vanderbilt and the city, because we know the odds on something like that. But at that point we were in.”

Fisher says that had city officials not been active partners with Vanderbilt, they probably wouldn’t be raising the issue of Belmont coming to the party late in the game. “We just had a different view of the process,” he says.

Meanwhile, Fisher says, Belmont had consulted about the proposal with someone active in national politics and who has knowledge of Vanderbilt. This person, whom he declines to name, didn’t know Vanderbilt was developing a proposal to host a debate. “We just made an assumption that they weren’t,” Fisher says. “I should have just picked up the phone and called my good friend Gordon Gee, but I didn’t. I just rocked on.”

Vanderbilt’s Schoenfeld, who characterizes the debate as “one of the Super Bowls of politics,” is more a pitchman for his proposal than anything else, though he does acknowledge the potential for Nashville to be passed over.

“We have all the stars in alignment—the facilities, the real commitment from the mayor, from the chancellor and from the community, and we think we’ve got a darn strong proposal,” he says. “It would be very unfortunate for Nashville if we were not to get it because of the perception that it might cause a political rift.”

The debate commission’s board of directors plans to make a final decision about sites in October and is expected to announce them in November. The list will include three presidential debate sites, one vice presidential debate site and an alternate. It’s then up to the campaigns to negotiate the dates of those debates and how many. (There were three presidential debates in 2000.)

In the meantime, one thing is absolutely clear: Belmont’s not backing down. If directly pressured to withdraw his proposal, Fisher says, “I guess I would ask why. That’s about all. I don’t want to conjecture that. I’ve not received that kind of call or request and I’m really hopeful I don’t. Because, again, I don’t want to convey to the commission that there’s any reason for them not to look at both sites. My position from the beginning, when I first learned this, is, well, Nashville’s got two shots.”