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GOP Debate Shrinks To 7 Candidates; Rand Paul To Skip Undercard

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has made the main stage in every GOP presidential debate so far in the 2016 campaign. He will not show up to the next debate on Thursday after being relegated to the lower tier by Fox Business Network.
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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has made the main stage in every GOP presidential debate so far in the 2016 campaign. He will not show up to the next debate on Thursday after being relegated to the lower tier by Fox Business Network.

Just seven candidates will take the main stage for the next Republican presidential debate, on the Fox Business Network on Thursday evening — the fewest of any GOP debate so far in the 2016 campaign.

Businessman Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich will battle it out in the main event in Charleston, S.C.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina did not make the cut for the main debate and have been assigned to an earlier matchup with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

But Paul won't be there.

"We will not participate in anything that is not first-tier," Paul told CNN shortly after the announcement.

Paul's campaign has been criticizing the debate criteria for days, repeating widely held criticism that the TV networks hosting primary debates are basing their selection on polling.

They had warned that Paul would not show up for an "undercard" matchup.

"By any reasonable criteria Senator Paul has a top tier campaign," a statement from the Paul campaign said just after the lineup was announced Monday evening. "He will not let the media decide the tiers of this race and will instead take his message directly to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa."

The top-tier debate, with just seven participants, will be the smallest yet this campaign season. At one point, 11 candidates were on the main stage.

The criteria to make the main debate were set out by Fox last month. A candidate had to average in the top six slots nationally, or in the top five in Iowa or New Hampshire in a set of recent polls selected by the network.

Previous debates were selected based on national polling.

Recent polling suggests that including the Iowa and New Hampshire polls helped Kasich make the cut, as he is performing much better in New Hampshire than he is nationally.

In fact, the latest average of pollsfrom Real Clear Politics shows Kasich behind Paul and Fiorina nationally. But national polls are a problematic measure in a primary since the contests are won state by state over a period of months.

The first contest of the 2016 presidential campaign — the Iowa caucuses — will be held on Feb. 1.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: January 11, 2016 at 9:00 PM PST
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Thursday's debate on Fox Business Network in South Carolina is the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses. There is another GOP debate in Iowa on Fox News Channel on Jan. 28.
Arnie Seipel is the Deputy Washington Editor for NPR. He oversees daily news coverage of politics and the inner workings of the federal government. Prior to this role, he edited politics coverage for seven years, leading NPR's reporting on the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. In between campaigns, Seipel edited coverage of Congress and the White House, and he coordinated coverage of major events including State of the Union addresses, Supreme Court confirmations and congressional hearings.