MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE — New Hampshire voters, who will have the first say in the 2016 primaries, expressed anger Saturday that the Democratic Party is only allowing six primary debates. The Republican Party, which has many more candidates fighting for the nomination, will hold more than 10.
At the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention in Manchester, where five candidates for the Democratic nomination gave their pitches, voters repeatedly interrupted party chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz demanding she allow more debates.
Flustered by the chants of “more debates” and “we want debates,” Wasserman Shultz yelled back, “My friends, what’s more important, drawing a contrast with Republicans or arguing about debates?”
Voters in the crowd told ThinkProgress they were not happy with this response.
“She was playing it down and making it seem trivial when it’s not trivial. It will probably decide who the next president is,” said convention participant Ahmad Rahman. “O’Malley and Bernie both talked about raising the minimum wage and reforming foreign policy, so even if there are just small differences, we need to know.”
Max Eberstadtbeattie, a student at Phillips Exeter Academy who will turn 18 by Election Day, agreed. “You need more debates, because every candidate has very similar platforms,” he said. “Since they’re arguing for issue-driven campaigns, it’d be nice for them to get more chances to say, ‘This is what I’m going to do differently and why.’”
But despite growing demands from voters and candidates to add more Democratic debates, the DNC is so far refusing to budge. “We’re having six debates — period,” Wasserman Shultz told reporters last week. “We’re not changing the process.” The current schedule has six debates scheduled in key primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and important swing states like Florida and Wisconsin, starting this October.
The candidates lagging the furthest in the polls, who could benefit the most from the airtime a debate would provide, are making the loudest demands on the issue. Outside the convention, in Manchester’s Veterans Park, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley told a small crowd of supporters that the DNC can’t let the recent Republican debates “go unanswered,” and blasted the debate schedule as a “one-woman edict.”
“Republicans are going to continue to debate, and they can have their anger and they can have their fear, but the Democratic party has something to say about the future of this country, don’t you think?” he said. “I believe in a Democratic Party that actually supports Democratic debates and the full exchange of ideas, instead of sitting back on the couch and letting their distortions and pretty hateful rhetoric go unanswered. And here in New Hampshire, you’re only allowed to have one debate, and [Wasserman Shultz] has decided to schedule it on the busiest Saturday right before Christmas, when as few people will watch it as possible. I don’t think that’s right. I think we’re a better party than that.”
This firm insistence contrasts with the stance of Hillary Clinton, who has said she is open to more debates, but has not called on the DNC to add them. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has spoken in slightly stronger terms, saying, “I think that [the debate restriction] is dead wrong and I have let the leadership of the Democrats know that.”
Though O’Malley is currently polling at just 1 percent in New Hampshire, he told reporters that with more “exchanges of ideas,” that could change.
“The inevitable front runner in every race is always inevitable right up until the people of New Hampshire have a chance to have their say-so,” he said.