Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa acknowledged Thursday that there’s a larger conversation to be had about diversity on the debate stage.
“I think we can have a larger conversation about people of color and candidates of color and why they haven’t done as well this late in the race, Hinojosa said on Hill.TV.
“But I think that our rules have been fair,” she continued, before adding that the threshold can’t be “based on any one candidate.”
Hinojosa also emphasized that the DNC would review its thresholds in January following the early state primaries.
“Once voting starts then we will take a fresh look at everything because we want to make sure our threshold and our criteria for these debates actually reflect the votes of the people in the early states and those contests,” she said.
After Sen. Kamala Harris’s terminated her 2020 bid, Democrats spoke out against an increasing lack of diversity in race.
“We started with one of the most diverse fields in our history,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) tweeted, following Harris’s exit earlier this month. “It’s a damn shame that the only African American woman in this race is no longer in it, and we’re spiraling toward a debate stage without a single person of color.”
Booker (D-N.J.) later started a petition urging the DNC to change its debate qualifications. Eight other presidential candidates signed onto the letter asking the committee to “consider alternative debate qualification standards” for four primary debates scheduled to take place in January and February.
“The escalating thresholds over the past few months have unnecessarily and artificially narrowed what started as the strongest and most diverse Democratic field in history before voters have had a chance to be heard,” he wrote.
Hinojosa told Hill.TV she was not surprised by the move, noting that Booker did not qualify for the latest debate set to take place in Los Angeles.
“What we found is no one who is polling below 4 percent consistently in the race at this point goes on to be our Democratic nominee,” she said. “We have been very clear with all of the candidates that the threshold would go up and nobody complained about it then.”
Booker has struggled to gain traction in the crowded Democratic field. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls shows the New Jersey senator at 2.5 percent support.
Hinojosa’s comments come as seven candidates prepare for sixth Democratic debate.
In order to make the debate, candidates had to amass the support of at least 200,000 unique donors and register at least 4 percent support in four qualifying polls or at least 6 percent support in two approved early voting state polls.
The debate, sponsored by PBS Newshour and Politico, will feature former Vice President Joe Biden front and center. He will be joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), South Bend Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), billionaire Tom Steyer and businessman Andrew Yang. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) had qualified for the debate before ending her campaign.
—Tess Bonn
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