Three states so feared that Fox News had usurped their role in picking a presidential nominee that they have created an alternative forum to crash the GOP’s first nationally televised debate.
Few in Fox’s audience — prospective voters, politicos and other press — seem happy with the first debate’s structure, and neither do the residents of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.
The New Hampshire Union Leader, Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa and Charleston Post and Courier in South Carolina, have mounted an insurrection against Fox News. The Union Leader has led the charge, co-sponsoring a Voters First Forum on Monday night in Manchester that will feature 14 Republican presidential candidates. C-SPAN will televise the event alongside stations from Iowa and South Carolina, and New Hampshire radio stations will broadcast it.
Each participant can expect to receive more airtime than he or she might on Fox, and not just because Donald Trump has chosen not to attend. Joe McQuaid, the Union Leader’s publisher, told the Washington Examiner his forum will deliver what voters crave — more candidates onstage at one time than the debates prepared by Fox or CNN.
“I can sympathize with Fox’s problem, but six months before the votes are cast it’s a little too early to be saying this is the field because we’re putting only this field on in prime time,” McQuaid said. “I invited newspapers with which I’m affiliated in South Carolina and Iowa to be co-sponsors of this because they’re in the same boat as New Hampshire is — being concerned that our primaries are going to go by the wayside because some television network is going to decide that it’s a national primary.”
The Republican Party has not sanctioned the Voters First Forum, but the forum does not violate GOP rules, either, McQuaid said. If organizers had structured the forum as an unsanctioned debate, the participants could not appear in any subsequent debates run by the GOP, according to information provided by a Republican National Committee staffer.
Craig Robinson, a former political director of Iowa’s Republican Party, told the Examiner that he has engaged in past negotiations about presidential debates. Robinson said he thinks Republicans made a big mistake to host the first debate in Cleveland instead of an early nominating state. He added that the debate has frustrated Iowa GOP officials who want to see polling from their state matter more.
Fox News will put on “the show people want to see,” he said, but the result may not best serve voters.
“The sad reality is our presidential nominating process is not for the thoughtful candidate who’s passionate about issues,” Robinson said. “These presidential contests are weighted so that the advantage is about popularity and money and fundraising ability and name ID.”
If the early nominating states hosted the primary debates and the moderators relied on in-state polling to help stock the stage, the result could look much different. Recent polls show Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal behind nearly a dozen other candidates nationally, but he fares somewhat better in Iowa. Curt Anderson, Jindal’s strategist, said the governor is focused on voters in early states, not the national polls used for the televised debates.
“This race has just begun, we have half a year before any votes will be cast, and efforts from Washington to shrink the field are foolish,” Anderson said in an email. “National polling would be a good measure of a national primary, but we don’t have one in this country.”
Other candidates and campaigns jockeying for position have taken issue with the debate developed by Fox News and the RNC, too. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson wrote a letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus earlier this year that complained the debate criterion “does our party a tremendous disservice.” While Carson has exceeded expectations in early polling, he expressed concern that the rules could block other presidential candidates, such as businesswoman Carly Fiorina, from taking the stage.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s presidential campaign manager, Christian Ferry, also wrote a letter to Priebus expressing his concern about the “nationalization of the presidential primary process.”
“By refusing to publicly speak out against the media-imposed restrictions, the RNC is placing exorbitant influence over our primary process into the hands of media executives instead of the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and the other early primary states,” Ferry wrote.
The RNC has largely refrained from pushing back against such intra-party criticism. But RNC communications director Sean Spicer wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that challenges the detractors. He said future debates might include in-state polling rather than only national polling, and called the two-tiered debate structure employed by cable news “the most inclusive setup in history.” Fox News will hold two debates, hours apart. One will feature the 10 candidates who perform best in recent national polls, and a separate debate will include the rest.
“Federal election law states that only two types of entities may host a debate: a 501(c)(3) organization or a media outlet. The Republican National Committee is neither,” Spicer wrote. “Those who call on the RNC to change the [debate] criteria misunderstand the law.”
Fox has changed its plans for the first televised debate multiple times after growing dissatisfaction. Its plans now include more of the major candidates, and the lower-polling candidates’ screen time will appear later than previously scheduled. Carly Shanahan, spokeswoman for Fox News, would not explain why the cable news channel made the changes and did not answer whether the Voters First Forum had any impact on Fox’s decisions.
“We pretend like we’re confined by an hour and 30 minutes on prime time with every candidate standing behind a podium,” said Robinson, the former Iowa GOP political director. “I think as long as we’re locked into that mindset, that’s the show we have to see and we have to produce. I think the results are going to fail, and the loser is the American public.”
