Susan Page

Susan Page, the longtime Washington bureau chief for USA Today, will be in charge of keeping the candidates in line at the vice presidential debate today in Salt Lake City, where Vice President Mike Pence will face off against Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

The sole showdown between running mates is typically the secondary act in the four events sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates in an election year. But the age of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who will be 78 on inauguration day in 2021, and the health of 74year-old Republican incumbent President Trump, released from the hospital Monday after contracting the coronavirus, has heightened the significance of the No. 2 spot on the ticket in the 2020 campaign.

Page, 69, is a veteran White House reporter, who has covered six administrations and 11 national campaigns. She is the first print reporter to handle a televised presidential or vice presidential debate since 1976, when James Hoge, then-editor of the Chicago Sun-times, moderated the matchup of VP contenders

Walter Mondale and Robert Dole.

Here is what you need to know about Page.

Journalism has been a family affair. Page, a native of Kansas, is married to Carl Leubsdorf, a columnist and former Washington bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. One of their two sons, Ben, was a reporter at the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal and is now a librarian at the Congressional Research Service.

She took heat over a party she threw for a Trump administration official in 2018. After Page’s debate assignment was announced, a House committee report surfaced that she held a celebration at her home two years ago for Seema Verma, head of Medicare and Medicaid Services. While such social occasions are part of the Washington beat, Page came under criticism when it was revealed the cost for the PR consultant that arranged the event was paid for by taxpayers. A representative for USA Today said Page was unaware of the charge and had covered the $4,000 for catering and other costs for the party out of her own pocket.