GOP push

GOP campaigns push to take more control of debates

The meeting came at a time of widespread consternation within the party over the debates. 

By Alex Isenstadt

Republican campaigns on Sunday evening pushed to take greater control over the party’s chaotic debate process, agreeing to oversee negotiation of format with TV networks while relegating the Republican National Committee to focus on logistical matters.

After the two-hour meeting, held at a Hilton in Alexandria, Va., top advisers to the GOP presidential campaigns — angry over how the first three debates have gone — said they were prepared to negotiate critical formatting issues with networks that will be broadcasting the future debates, a matter that until now had been overseen by the RNC. The campaigns said they were preparing to send a letter to TV networks informing them of their collective view of how future debates should look.

“I think it was productive in that campaigns will now assume negotiation of format instead of the RNC,” said Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal, whose campaign helped organize the gathering.

It was a stunning development for a party committee that entered the election cycle determined to take greater control of a debate process that, four years ago, went badly off track. And it was evidence of a national GOP that is struggling to oversee a large and rambunctious field of primary candidates.

Those present in the meeting stressed that the RNC would maintain some key powers. In addition to focusing on logistical issues surrounding the debates, people present said, the RNC would help resolve disagreements between the campaigns and the networks when they arose.

The changes will take effect after the next debate, which is slated to be held Nov. 10 on Fox Business.

One flash point in the meeting, according to several people in the room, came when Jeb Bush's campaign manager Danny Diaz urged the group to reinstate the planned Feb. 26 debate partnership with Telemundo, which the RNC suspended this week after this week’s disastrous CNBC debate (Telemundo is owned by NBC Universal, CNBC’s parent company). Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski pushed back hard, threatening to boycott the event entirely.

Immediately after the meeting wrapped up, Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election attorney who had been overseeing the discussion, placed a call to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. But Ginsberg got the chairman’s voicemail, so he then reached out to Sean Cairncross, the committee’s legal counsel, to inform him of the group’s decisions.

Sunday's meeting came at a time of widespread consternation within the party over the debates. This week’s debate, which was held in Boulder, Colorado, and broadcast on CNBC, was widely panned, with several of the candidates accusing the moderators of asking "gotcha" questions designed to embarrass them.

Many of the campaigns have directed their frustration at the RNC. In recent weeks, the campaigns have argued that the committee has failed to represent them effectively in negotiating on their behalf, and at times has been unfair. On Tuesday, one day before the Boulder debate, several lower-polling campaigns erupted at the RNC when they discovered that the committee had awarded nicer greenrooms to higher-polling candidates.

In an effort to appease the campaigns, the RNC on Saturday ordered a high-level shakeup of its debate negotiating team. Just minutes before the meeting was to begin, the committee announced that chief of staff Katie Walsh and Cairncross would oversee the debates for the committee — a job that had previously belonged to Sean Spicer, the committee’s chief strategist and communications director. (Spicer retains his other roles at the RNC.)

Among campaign advisers involved in the process, the move had been anticipated for days. Following the Boulder debacle, Walsh and Cairncross had been burning up their phones to campaigns in hopes of trying to figure out what they could do to improve things moving forward. Priebus had also taken an active role in reaching out to unhappy campaign aides.

Ginsberg, the moderator of Sunday evening’s discussion, has been a powerful force behind the scenes. In late September he sent a six-page, 1,800-word memo to GOP campaigns outlining some the problems with the logistics of the debates. “This won’t change unless the campaigns as a group do something about it,” he wrote. On Sunday, he told CNN that the campaigns' chief problem was the "loss of leverage" they suffered after handing too much power to the RNC.

Advisers to the Republican candidates spent much of Sunday's meeting hashing out formatting details. They agreed that debates should last no longer than two hours and that candidates should be granted 30-second opening and closing statements.

At one point in the meeting, representatives for Bush demanded that campaigns have veto power over which graphics the networks are allowed to use. (During the last debate, CNBC used a graphic listing Bush’s past work as a financial consultant but omitting his eight-year tenure as Florida governor.) Aides to other candidates agreed.

Advisers also agreed that they should be able to get information about the debates from the networks further in advance, and that each candidate should get an equal number of questions.

“I think we agreed to more than I thought we would,” said Barry Bennett, who serves as Ben Carson’s campaign manager and helped to organize the meeting.

Yet there remain fault lines — particularly between high- and low-polling candidates.

At one point, Curt Anderson, an adviser to Jindal, who has found himself stuck at the back of the pack and relegated to undercard debates — suggested doing away with undercards entirely. That initiated a discussion about how many candidates should appear on one stage.

Lewandowski, manager for the pack-leading Trump campaign, pushed back.

I don’t need 14 people on a stage, he said, according to one person present, saying that all they do is throw potshots at Trump.