Cory Booker Leads the Charge to Change Debate Rules That Excluded Him

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December 15, 2019 9:05 AM

WASHINGTON — At the urging of Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, eight Democratic presidential candidates, and Booker, have signed a letter urging Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, to lower the thresholds to qualify for the party’s January and February debates.

Cory Booker Leads the Charge to Change Debate Rules That Excluded Him

The letter, written and circulated by the Booker campaign, was sent to Perez and his top deputies Saturday afternoon. It comes amid angst that Thursday’s debate in Los Angeles will include just one candidate of color — businessman Andrew Yang — among the seven qualifying participants.

Booker did not qualify for next week’s debate and is unlikely to meet the criteria for the debates in January and February unless thresholds are lowered or he sees a significant improvement in his polling numbers.

The nine candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, businessman Tom Steyer, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, Yang and Booker — asked Perez to use either a polling or fundraising threshold, but not both.

Such a rule would vastly expand the roster, to most likely include not just Booker and Castro, but also former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and others who have not made the stage in months, and would almost certainly lead to two nights of debating.

“Candidates who have proven both their viability and their commitment to the Democratic Party are being prematurely cut out of the nominating contest before many voters have even tuned in — much less made their decision about whom to support,” reads the letter.

DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa called the committee’s debate criteria fair, and noted that no campaign objected when the thresholds were announced earlier this year. No television network has agreed to host two nights of debates in January or February, she said.

“The DNC will not change the threshold for any one candidate and will not revert to two consecutive nights with more than a dozen candidates,” Hinojosa said.

Booker failed to qualify for Thursday’s debate after failing to reach 4% support in any qualifying poll.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

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