CNN announced the details surrounding next month’s presidential town hall on LGBT issues Wednesday.
The town hall event will be held at The Novo theater in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, which coincides with the 31st anniversary of National Coming Out Day.
Each of the nine candidates who are participating will be given 30 minutes to answer questions from the moderators and audience members. The event will go on for four-and-a-half hours, according to the network.
The candidates who will be participating are, in the order of their appearances, philanthropist Tom Steyer, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Vice President Joe Biden, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.
Of the candidates who were on stage at last week’s debate, independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and entrepreneur Andrew Yang are the only two candidates who won’t be participating in this one. Both of them cited scheduling conflicts as the reason they cannot participate.
To participate, CNN is requiring candidates to meet the same qualifications used by the Democratic National Committee for the third and fourth debates: receive 2% support in four qualifying national polls and amass donations from 130,000 donors. The candidates have until Sept. 25 to qualify.
CNN tapped four different network personalities — Dana Bash, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, and Don Lemon — to interview the candidates.
This debate will be significantly shorter than the network’s seven-hour town hall about climate change earlier this month.
[Previous coverage: CNN’s climate town hall placed last in total viewership for all seven hours]
