During the 2nd half of the October 25 Express Times debate, the candidates would be asking each other direct questions. This was certainly going to be exciting, since I knew Jake would word his questions so that his opponents would have to give straight-forward answers.

Jake has pledged to accept only the district’s median household income, donate the rest of his pay to local, non-profit hospitals, and to refuse to enlist in the lucrative congressional health care and pension plans. Jake asked John Callahan why Callahan won’t take that same pledge.
See here YouTube - Jake Towne Asks John Callahan to Take a Pay Cut and Pay for His Own Healthcare

Right away, Callahan ignores the question and begins attacking Charlie Dent’s record. Jake grins at the crowd in an “I was expecting this” sort of way.

By then, the crowd had seen enough of Dent’s and Callahan’s bickering back and forth, and began to quietly murmur amongst themselves, which prompted Callahan to actually answer the question by saying, “I’d be open to something like that. Let’s be clear. I make $80,000 a year. It’s a fine salary and I’m proud of the salary.”
Then Callahan reverted back to attacking Dent for accepting such a large congressional salary. Callahan then said, stuttering, “I will be open. I think I will not accept an increase in pay, I will say this, at least until we turn back the employment rates before this recession.”
So Mayor Callahan never addressed the pension and health care perks, and he’ll simply refuse a pay raise until we get back to pre-recession employment levels.
In my book, he avoided Jake’s simple question. What is your opinion?