Who’s In and Who’s Out of the First Democratic Debates

The Democratic National Committee is set to announce the candidates who qualified for the first debates of the 2020 presidential campaign on Thursday, chopping the historically large field of 23 contenders down to the 20 available slots.

A New York Times analysis of the criteria indicates that Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mayor Wayne Messam of Miramar, Fla., did not qualify, and will be left out of the debates on June 26 and 27 in Miami.

The candidates who made the cut — a full list appears at the end of this article — did so by registering 1 percent support in three polls, receiving donations from 65,000 people, or both.

[Here’s a quick rundown of all 23 Democrats running for president.]

To determine the 10-candidate lineup for each debate, the committee has said it will evenly and randomly divide top-tier candidates across the two nights. NBC News, which is moderating the first debates, will select the lineups on Friday.

The June debates will be the first time many Americans see the Democratic field. For candidates outside the top tier the debates present a chance for a breakout moment — though the candidates will have to fight for airtime with nine other people on the stage each night.

Mr. Bullock, who kicked off his campaign May 14, has been outspoken about his displeasure with the party and the methods it used to pare down the field. In emails to donors, he complained vociferously after a poll that would have helped qualify him for the debates was excluded from consideration.

[Cut from the debate? It doesn’t mean a candidate can’t matter.]

Two other polls released this week gave Mr. Bullock a pair of additional chances to meet the threshold. Had he received 1 percent support in either of those polls, Mr. Bullock would have become the 21st candidate to qualify for the June debates, and that would have forced officials to employ tiebreakers to determine which candidate would be excluded.

In anticipation of the bad news expected Thursday, he put out a statement emphasizing, as he has repeatedly over the past few weeks, that he had delayed entering the race in order to work with the Montana Legislature to renew the state’s Medicaid expansion.

“While 20 candidates are on the debate stage in Miami, I will be talking directly to voters about my record of passing progressive priorities in a state Trump won, the importance of winning the places we lost, and how we are going to beat Donald Trump once and for all,” Mr. Bullock said.

Mr. Moulton has yet to garner 1 percent of support in any qualifying poll since he began his campaign to become the Democratic nominee in April. This week, a spokesman for the campaign declined to say how many people had donated. But in a statement on Wednesday, the spokesman, Matt Corridoni, said the debates “will not determine who the nominee is.”

“At this point in 2016 Trump wasn’t even in the race. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was the presumed nominee, and in 2004 we were preparing for President Howard Dean,” he said. “History shows it’s better to be where we’re positioned now than anyone else. Seth has been receiving a great response on the ground and he’ll continue to take his message directly to voters.”

Mr. Messam has also struggled to gain attention, having reached the 1 percent threshold in only one poll. The campaign did not respond when asked this week about its fund-raising efforts, and it did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about his status in the debates.

The uphill climb toward the nomination is only getting steeper for long shot candidates like Mr. Bullock, Mr. Moulton and Mr. Messam.

About two weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee announced that it would toughen the requirements for participation in the fall debates. To qualify for the party’s third debate, scheduled for mid-September, candidates will have to attract donations from 130,000 individuals and register at least 2 percent in four state or national polls from a list of approved surveys.

More than half of the sprawling field is at risk of falling short of that threshold, and news of the more stringent rules sent shock waves through the campaigns on the margins. Some of the most vulnerable candidates have argued that the standard forces them to spend time and money recruiting donors, rather than investing in staff or online advertising.

“We set forth the rules early,” Tom Perez, the party chairman, told The Times this week. “We communicated them clearly to everybody. We got no objections when we communicated the rules of participation.”

But that has not stopped some candidates from complaining. Some have maintained that party officials are winnowing the field far too early, or that the mechanics of qualifying for the debates are unfair. Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington has insisted — to little avail — that party officials reserve a debate exclusively for climate change.

“I believe everybody is, in fact, getting a fair shake,” Mr. Perez said. “At the end of the day it’s going to be up to voters.”

The 20 candidates who appear to have qualified, in alphabetical order, are: Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado; former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.; former housing secretary Julián Castro; Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York; former Representative John Delaney of Maryland; Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Senator Kamala Harris of California; former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas; Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio; Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Representative Eric Swalwell of California; Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; the self-help author Marianne Williamson; and the former tech executive Andrew Yang.



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