Debate moderators announced: Crowley, Lehrer, Schieffer, Raddatz

ByABC News
August 13, 2012, 10:24 AM

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With the participants finally set, the moderators of the 2012 presidential and vice presidential debates were announced by the Commission on Presidential Debates on Monday.

PBS' Jim Lehrer will moderate the first presidential debate on Oct. 3 at the Univ. of Denver.

Candy Crowley, host of CNN's "State of the Union," will host the second--a town hall format--on Oct. 16 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island.

CBS News' Bob Schieffer--who snagged the first joint interview with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on Sunday--will moderate the third presidential debate, Oct. 22 in Boca Raton.

Martha Raddatz, ABC News' chief foreign correspondent, will host the lone vice presidential debate on Oct. 11 from Danville, Kentucky.

The moderator lineup was first reported by the Drudge Report.

Both Lehrer and Schieffer moderated debates between Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008.

Crowley will be the first female in over 20 years to moderate a presidential debate. ABC News' Carole Simpson, who served as moderator of a 1992 debate between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot, was the last woman to do so.

Earlier this year, three high school students from Montclair, N.J., launched a petition calling for the commission to select a female moderator for at least one of the three 2012 presidential debates.