African-American Groups Collaborate To Host Gubernatorial Debate

(CBS) -- Crews are busy getting the DuSable Museum Auditorium ready for Tuesday's debate, which will be televised on CBS 2 at 6 p.m. CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker introduces us to the two groups behind the debate.

Andrea Zopp is the CEO of the Chicago Urban League which has been promoting jobs, businesses, education, and political empowerment in Chicago's African-American community for nearly 100 years.

"Our vision is that a stronger African-American community is a better Chicago," Zopp said.

Hosting political debates is not new to the Urban League. Among the many, the Democratic primary gubernatorial debate in 1984, the 2000 U.S. congressional debate and now the gubernatorial debate between incumbent Pat Quinn and Republican candidate Bruce Rauner.

"What we hope is that you'll get a little more substance than we've seen in a lot of the commercials which tend tojust be super negative and don't really give you the why should I vote for you?" Zopp said.

Karen Riley is the executive director of the Business Leadership Council, that includes some of Chicago's most influential black leaders. It's a relatively new organization with downtown offices, but here too the focus is empowering the community, making sure the candidates address key issues of increasing jobs and businesses, decreasing unemployment and improving education.

"It shouldn't be lost that because it's African-American centered that these issues don't affect all communities, because they do. What African-Americans want, Latinos want, what any minority community wants is to be included in a state that's great."