Four 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates are set to take place in January and February just before each of the first four early state nominating contests.
One of the debates, announced by the Democratic National Committee on Thursday, may post a conflict for the candidates set to be in Washington for a Senate impeachment trial.
On Jan. 14, CNN, in partnership with the Des Moines Register, will host the last debate before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Just before the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary, candidates will debate on Feb. 7 at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, in a debate hosted ABC in partnership with WMUR-TV and Apple News.
MSNBC, in partnership with the Nevada Independent, will host a debate on Feb. 19 in Las Vegas, Nevada, ahead of the Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses.
Finally, on Feb. 25, CBS News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, in partnership with Twitter, will host a debate at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina, just before the state’s Feb. 29 primary.
The January date could pose a conflict for the five senators seeking the party’s presidential nomination: Michael Bennet of Colorado, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. (Bennet and Booker did not qualify for the December debate round.)
Xochitl Hinojosa, communications director of the DNC, addressed impeachment scheduling issues. “If a conflict with an impeachment trial is unavoidable, the DNC will evaluate its options and work with all the candidates to accommodate them,” she said in a tweet.
Qualification metrics have not been announced. Recent debates require candidates to secure a required number of individual donors, plus meet a minimum threshold in DNC-approved polls. For the December debate, the standard was 200,000 individual donors and 4% support in at least four polls within a certain time frame. The rules have pushed some nonqualifying candidates to drop out, though others have continued campaigning without appearing on the stage.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez left open the possibility of different standards for some of the debates set to take place in 2020, which could allow participation for Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor who is self-funding his campaign and therefore not acquiring individual donors.
“We haven’t set the rules for after the first of the year, and that’s something that we’re doing right now, and we always set the rules early enough so that we can give notice to the campaigns,” Perez said in an interview last month.
The DNC has committed to hosting 12 debates, meaning it will schedule two more debates to occur after the Feb. 25 round.
