Democratic presidential hopefuls at risk of being elbowed out by the debate rules may have gotten a last-minute reprieve.
The deadline to qualify for the September debate is Aug. 28, just a little over three weeks away. To reach the stage, candidates have to poll at 2 percent in four Democratic National Committee-approved surveys and have 130,000 unique donors. That’s a bar the majority of the field has not hit and isn’t on track to do so.
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But a DNC memo sent to all the campaigns on Monday essentially gives those candidates who miss the September debate more time to qualify for the October debate, which could very well feature more candidates, not fewer.
The DNC memo sets the deadline to reach 130,000 donors and score at 2 percent in four polls at two weeks before the October debate and starts the qualification period on June 28, the same day qualification for the September debate began. Effectively, this means all candidates who qualify for the September debate are automatically in the October debate, unless they drop out of the race. And any candidate who misses the September debate has more time to receive new donations or score 2 percent in the polls.
How much extra time will there be? No date was given for the fourth debate in the memo, but even an early October date would add about three weeks to the qualification period ending in late August.
Extending the September criteria to the October debate instead of setting new parameters could allow struggling candidates who missed the first fall debate to stay in the race for an extra few weeks to try to make it onstage in latter fall debate.
Just eight candidates have qualified for the two fall debates thus far, according to a POLITICO analysis: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Two other candidates — Julián Castro and Andrew Yang — are on track to qualify for both debates. Both Castro and Yang have already exceeded the donor threshold — which also requires candidates to have 400 donors a piece in 20 states — and need to score 2 percent in just one more poll before the August deadline.
The rest of the field faces a significant barrier to making it onstage in September. Tulsi Gabbard has crossed the donor threshold but still needs to get 2 percent in three more polls. Tom Steyer has two qualifying polls and needs an additional two. He has not said how many donors he has, but he spent close to $1 million on Facebook ads last week, a strategy to try to attract the 130,000 donors.
But the October deadline should be welcome news for Gabbard, Steyer, and the rest of the candidates who aren’t close to qualifying. Any progress they bank toward qualifying for the September debate carries over to the October debate.
This was also the case for the first set of debates over the summer. Twenty candidates qualified for the first debate in June. An additional two who missed the stage in June also qualified in July with the extra time: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock via polling, with polls that took place both before and after the first debate, and former Sen. Mike Gravel via the donor route. Bullock secured his spot on the stage for the second debate after surpassing Rep. Eric Swalwell on a set of DNC-set tiebreakers. Swalwell dropped out of the race between the two debates.
Candidates are acutely aware of the importance of getting a national audience from the debates. On Monday evening, Gabbard sent an email to her supporters addressing questions on how to help her campaign, now that she’s passed the donor threshold.
Her advice? Answer the phone, even if you don’t know the number, in case it’s a pollster. And she urged her backers to sign up to participate in polls from the two online firms whose surveys count for the debates.