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Michael Scherer
National political reporter covering campaigns, Congress and the White House
The Democratic Party announced Thursday that it would exclude some polls from qualifying criteria for the first Democratic presidential debate in June, a change in official rules that may rule out Montana's governor, Steve Bullock.
The demands are even more controversial as part of a debate process that the chairman of the National Democratic Committee, Tom Perez, once called "open and transparent," but has since fallen into sharp criticism.
Less well-known candidates have said that the rules distort the race by emphasizing the importance of certain campaign tactics and benefiting some candidates. A campaign advisor even threatened to hold unauthorized rival talks this fall if too many candidates were excluded from official debates. Some party members also complained of being excluded from the process, which was overseen by Perez, in order to qualify for events that should be the most important campaign rallies to date.
"This change of secret rule affects only one candidate," Bull Rid campaign manager Jenn Ridder wrote in a memo to reporters on Thursday. "This means that the DNC chooses the only Democrat who has won a Trump State and potentially blocks it from the debating stage."
Perez announced in February a set of rules for the June and July debates with two possible qualifying thresholds: receive support of at least 1% in three different polls conducted by 18 media in 2019 or receive donations of 65 000 donors. At the time, the DNC was seeking to dispel accusations that the party's 2016 debate process had been tilted in favor of Hillary Clinton at the expense of Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont).
The rules of the original debate did not limit the types of polls that could be used to qualify, and included polls from The Washington Post and ABC News, which had already conducted a survey in January in which respondents voluntarily indicated which candidate they supported in the polls. place of a list of candidates.
But the DNC publicly announced Thursday that such open-ended polls would not count to reach the threshold of debate, as voters can include non-candidates in their answers. As a result, Bullock can not use a post-ABC survey from January, in which it earned 1%, as the third qualifying poll.
"We announced the Bullock campaign in early March, so they've known it for months," said Xochitl Hinojosa, the party's director of communications.
Ridder, Bullock's campaign manager, criticized the party for "excluding an open-ended poll that is actually more difficult to register and not have shared the rule in writing with all the presidential campaigns."
Of the 23 Democrats running for presidential elections, 20 say they have enough votes under the new criteria to qualify for the debate stage, leaving only Bullock, Wayne Messam, Mayor of Miramar, Florida, and Rep. Seth Moulton ( Mass.) Outside the procedure. Thirteen candidates also report having qualified with 65,000 donors.
The three unskilled candidates have until June 12 to qualify for the first round of debate this month. If more than 20 candidates qualify for a ballot, those with the lowest voting averages will be excluded. The second round of debates in July will use the same criteria.
A separate set of rules for the third round of debate in September, which the party announced last week, explicitly excludes open polls, which may provide an alternative picture of the race at some point before most voters decide of their candidate. To present themselves on the stage, candidates must receive at least 2% of the results of four polls published by a similar list of media organizations and receive contributions to the 130,000 donor campaign by the end of of the month of August.
These rules have sounded the alarm for campaigns that have so far struggled to stand out. Advisers from four different campaigns, who requested anonymity to discuss strategy, spent last week pondering ways to increase the number of donors for their campaigns during the summer months. , a historically difficult time for voters to reach.
"It all depends on fundraising, your political positions, your travel decisions," said one of the counselors of a Democratic presidential candidate. "This completely changes the process of the primary."
One of the ideas discussed by three different campaigns would be to organize joint fundraisers to encourage donors to donate one dollar to several rivals at a time. Another campaign informally contacted rivals to determine if they wanted to exert joint pressure on Perez to modify the September criteria in order to meet the threshold of the donor or the vote, but not both.
A separate campaign was launched to discuss the possibility of leaving the democratic debate process in the autumn to organize unauthorized alternative debates with the excluded from the official stage. According to party rules, candidates who participate in unauthorized debates will be excluded from party debates.
"The other candidates could only participate in the sanctioned debates," said the advisor. "He opens all the rest."
Some party officials also expressed their public concern over the process by which Perez decided the rules of the debate, which did not involve discussions with the core members of the committee.
"At least we had to have an explanation or some degree of consultation with the process put in place. And we do not know, "said Jim Zogby, a member of the District of Columbia Committee. "To win in November 2020, we will need a unified party."
Others have also expressed similar concerns.
"For these types of milestones / decisions, I think we need one representative from each region elected by the region to participate in the decision-making process," Jane Kleeb, president of the Nebraska Democratic Party, recently tweeted to respond to Zogby's concerns.
Bullock's results in the controversial Post-ABC survey show how small the difference can be between a candidate who comes to the stage and hard work. Candidates who vote at 1% often get support from only a handful of survey respondents.
A majority of the 447 Democrats and Democrats surveyed for the January post-CBA survey did not nominate a particular candidate, but two respondents mentioned Bullock.
When the survey was weighted according to population, Bullock support was rounded to 1%., the same as those who volunteered, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, in this survey. When an April Post-ABC poll asked the same question, no respondent voluntarily offered Bullock's name.
Bullock announced its campaign on May 14, after the closure of Montana's legislative session, placing it at a distinct disadvantage in meeting the thresholds for debate. Bullock also received 1% support in March from a Des Moines Register poll in Iowa and a April national poll by Reuters. Both will continue to be counted for the threshold.
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