Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said there will likely be polling thresholds in place for candidates to participate in RNC-sanctioned debates during the party’s 2016 presidential nominating contest.
“You can’t do 20 people,” Mr. Priebus told radio host Hugh Hewitt. “You have to have certain thresholds in place, so you have to be at 1 percent of the vote in Iowa and that threshold can move like a slide rule based on the proximity to the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primaries, etcetera, just like it did before.”
Mr. Priebus said it’s not set in stone, but he thinks the rules will be worked out between the RNC and the media partners of the debates. The RNC recently released a list of nine scheduled party-sanctioned debates between August 2015 and March 1, 2016 — a truncated schedule compared to the 2012 election.
The RNC is now including 34 possible candidates in an online presidential straw poll.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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