He won’t be on the stage later this week in Houston, but billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has hit the polling threshold to qualify for October’s Democratic presidential debate, according to Mr. Steyer’s campaign.
Mr. Steyer was at 2% support in both Nevada and Iowa in CBS News “Battleground Tracker” polling released on Sunday.
Candidates need to secure contributions from 130,000 individual donors and register 2% support in four qualifying polls to make it into the fourth debate, which will take place in October in Ohio.
Mr. Steyer had already hit the donor threshold, and had been one poll short of qualifying.
Ten candidates have qualified for the third debate, which will take place on Thursday in Houston, Texas, as well as for the fourth debate. The qualification criteria for both debates were the same.
Mr. Steyer’s apparent qualification would put at least 11 candidates into the fourth debate, unless someone drops out of the race beforehand.
That means the Ohio debate will likely move back to a two-night affair. That was the case with the debates that were held in June and July in which a total of 20 candidates participated - 10 on each of two nights.
In order to qualify for the first two debates, candidates had to secure contributions from 65,000 individual donors or hit 1% support in three qualifying polls.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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