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 Officials from 11 campaigns for the 2016 Republican presidential
nomination met for two hours behind closed doors at a hotel in the
Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss the way
forward just days after a heavily criticized debate hosted by CNBC
in Boulder, Colorado.
"The campaigns are going to take a more active role in discussing
the format with the networks," said a senior official from one
campaign who attended the meeting. "They're going to expect to have
a more direct engagement with the networks."
The negotiating role for the three debates held so far has been held
by the Republican National Committee. The official said the
campaigns want to limit the RNC role to handling logistics like the
distribution of tickets and arranging backstage holding rooms for
the candidates at the event sites.
Campaigns were angered at the RNC for its handling of the CNBC
debate because the event was advertised to be a two-hour discussion
of economic issues but veered wildly from that theme and the
moderators struggled to maintain control.
The format for the next debate on Nov. 10 in Milwaukee to be hosted
by Fox Business Network was left alone for the most part. The other
five debates going forward could see some changes, the official
said.
The RNC, aware of a rebellion brewing among the campaigns, had
sought to defuse the situation. The RNC dumped NBC News, a partner
of CNBC, from hosting a Feb. 26 debate in Houston on Friday and on
Sunday, it announced it had appointed its chief operating officer,
Sean Cairncross, to help negotiate debate terms with the networks.
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But that wasn't enough. The campaigns said at the meeting that they
needed a better understanding up front of what the host network's
telecasts would include because, as another campaign official said,
there has been a bad flow of information between the networks and
the RNC to date on what the candidates should expect.
During the Alexandria discussions, this official said, the campaign
representative for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush sought to
reinstate Spanish-language network Telemundo to the Feb. 26 debate.
Telemundo and National Review are co-sponsors of that debate.
But the campaign of Donald Trump refused to go along with this
demand, the official said. Trump has campaigned on a platform of
building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to stem illegal
immigrants.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Peter Cooney; Editing by
Eric Walsh)
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