Fail to unite

GOP campaigns fail to unite around debate demands

The push to seize negotiating power from the RNC is rapidly losing ground.

By Alex Isenstadt , Hadas Gold and Nick Gass

The push among Republican campaigns to take greater control of debate negotiations collapsed on Tuesday, as candidates split over whether to sign a letter to TV networks outlining their demands for future debates.

The biggest holdout emerged Tuesday evening, with an aide to Jeb Bush telling POLITICO that the campaign had "no intention to [sign the letter] at this time." At a town hall event in New Hampshire, Bush suggested he wasn't too concerned about the debates.

"I’m a big boy. As long as the rules are established and everybody plays by the rules, I’ll be OK," he said.

Six other candidates — Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, and Donald Trump — have also said they will not sign on. Asked by Fox News host Megyn Kelly why he wouldn't sign the letter, Christie said, "Because it's stupid."

But others are plowing ahead.

Shortly before 5:00 p.m., Ben Carson's campaign manager Barry Bennett, who has been helping to organize the push, sent an email to other campaigns informing them that Carson’s team would be signing an abbreviated letter that would be released before midnight. In the email, Bennett said the letter would ask each network “for all of the critical information for their respective debates as soon as possible,” including, he wrote, “format details, qualification details, and site details.”

In the email, Bennett said the letter would be “a more concise version” of the detailed draft letter that Ben Ginsberg, a veteran election attorney who has been working with the campaigns, released Monday morning. He asked advisers to roughly a dozen other campaigns to respond by midnight. As of late Tuesday evening, only Bobby Jindal's campaign had said it would sign.

The letter, according to a copy provided to POLITICO, is a basic list of questions for the media properties hosting the debate. It includes questions such as how many audience members there will be and who the moderators are. Other questions are whether there will be opening statements, if the network will commit to providing an equal number of questions to each candidate and whether there will be a buzzer.

There is no mention of campaigns getting pre-approval for on-screen graphics, which was stipulated in an earlier draft.

Even if the candidates had been able to unite around a single list of demands, however, it's far from clear the networks would entertain some of them.

Most of the networks don't want to even comment on Ginsberg's draft letter, since the issue might soon be moot. But that doesn't mean some of the networks' correspondents are holding back from expressing their displeasure.

"Oh yeah, that’s gonna happen," Fox News' Megyn Kelly, a co-moderator of the first GOP debate, said sarcastically while reading out the list of demands as of Monday night. "Maybe like a foot massage?"

Some of the demands and questions are more logistical, such as the types of microphones and the temperature of the debate hall. But others include the pre-approval of graphics or not showing an empty podium during a break.

"Can you imagine having to submit our graphics for approval to the candidates?" an incredulous Kelly asked.

"I can’t and we won’t," Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, told her.

Over at CNN, host Kate Bolduan also scoffed at the idea that the campaigns could have any say in the network's graphics or reaction shots from the moderators or the audience.

"You're not going to tell a CNN control room, or any other network's control room, what the director shots are going to be," Bolduan said on Monday before an interview with Republican National Committee communications director and chief strategist Sean Spicer.

Trump, whose aides on Monday said the real estate mogul would not be signing the letter, weighed in on the debate flap Tuesday during an event at which his new book was unveiled.

“Well, I think the Republicans are actually doing a pretty good job overall," he said. "They coalesced at that last debate."

He then took a shot at CNBC's John Harwood, who asked Trump last week whether he was running a "comic-book version of a presidential campaign."

"It really started with me," Trump said. "The guy asked me a question. I think Harwood is probably finished as a credible reporter. He’s a disaster. And it was such a horribly put question and so obvious. And the Republicans coalesced around each other. It was actually pretty beautiful, when you think about it."

Asked for a response to Trump's attacks on Harwood, CNBC spokesperson Brian Steel said: "Journalists who ask would-be leaders of the free world substantive, challenging questions on interest rates, Social Security, the debt limit, student loans and taxes — to name a few — should be applauded."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who was widely praised for his debate performance, muted his criticism of CNBC on Tuesday in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.

“I know most of the candidates had prepared for an in-depth economic discussion and instead we got things that had nothing to do with the economy,” Rubio said. “I think that was the disappointment from my perspective. I don’t have any other complaints. Debates are supposed to be tough. They’re supposed to be difficult, and I anticipate that as a conservative, they’re gonna be even more difficult because there is bias in the mainstream media.”