Next year’s presidential election is set to move from the political pages to the living rooms of the nation next month as the contest for the Republican nomination reaches that modern stage of the race’s first full-fledged debate.
So far, there have been plenty of jockeys for the job by more than a dozen candidates, with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump sucking in most of the oxygen.
But amid the entire campaign, from fundraising and endorsements to candidate appearances and some publicity in early primary states, there’s something about the would-be Oval Office occupants facing off on stage in the glare of national attention, testing their mettle against each other, that signals the next phase of the seemingly endless campaign has begun.
In the nearly 50 years since nationally televised debates became a staple of the race for the White House, Colorado has hosted one of every variety, serving as the venue for a Democratic primary debate, a Republican primary debate and the pinnacle of the case, a presidential debate between candidates from the two major parties.
It’s unclear whether Colorado will land a debate this cycle, though it seems unlikely, since the state isn’t seen as up for grabs in 2024 after slipping solidly into the Democratic column in the past four presidential elections.
The Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized presidential and vice-presidential debates since the late 1980s, plans to release the debate schedule for the 2024 general election this fall.
So far, only one Republican presidential primary debate has been announced, with two more scheduled.
Debate season kicks off later than usual this cycle, potentially drawing more attention to the inaugural event once it takes place Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.
Although details are yet to be determined, the second primary debate is supposed to take place in September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The third primary debate is reportedly scheduled for October in Alabama.
As has been the custom for decades, the incumbent seeking re-election — Biden this time and Trump in the previous cycle — skips the debate on his main challengers, leaving it to the outside party to deal with.
While Trump faces at least a dozen declared Republican challengers, his status as a former president and his lead in nearly every poll could throw a bend in recent lore if he decides to sit out the primary debates, as he has suggested.
As things stand, Trump’s rivals are scrambling to meet fundraising, polling and other criteria — including a pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee — set by the Republican National Committee for an invitation to appear at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee in the crucial state of Wisconsin. Airing on Fox News, the August 23 debate will be hosted by the channel’s Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
It could be a while before the final lineup is known, but candidates who say they are or will soon be qualified for the debate include Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Mayor of MiamiFrancis Suarez. The RNC said the threshold will increase for further debates, which will likely reduce the herd.
Colorado has been there, albeit a while ago.
The state witnessed its first presidential primary debate in 1992, just days before voters cast their ballots in the state’s first-ever presidential primary.
That year, some powerful Democrats – chiefly New York Governor Mario Cuomo – refused to challenge Republican President George HW Bush, whose popularity had skyrocketed the year before the election following the country’s victory in the Persian Gulf War.
While Bush faced a surprisingly strong primary challenge from conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan, most of the action by the time Colorado held its primary election in early March was on the Democratic side.
Falling on what has been dubbed Mini Super Tuesday — a week before the more crowded, southern-dominated Super Tuesday — Colorado was among seven states voting on March 3, following split decisions in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, leaving no clear favorites.
After decades of expressing its presidential nomination preferences in precinct caucuses, Colorado established a primary beginning in 1992 in hopes of bringing attention to the state.
It worked.
The top five Democratic candidates — former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, former Gov. Jerry Brown of California, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska — descended on Colorado in the weeks leading up to the primary. Colorado residents nearly all voted on Election Day in 1992, more than 20 years before the state adopted mail-in voting.
Considered a key prize early in the primary calendar, Colorado received unprecedented attention as the five Democrats crisscrossed the state, pressing flesh as their campaigns flooded the airwaves with political ads, with a televised debate punctuating the race for votes.
Held onstage at the Denver Auditorium Theater the Saturday before the primary, Feb. 29 — a leap day — the 90-minute debate was sponsored by KUSA-TV and the Rocky Mountain News, moderated by news anchor Ed Sardella with KUSA reporter Jennifer Romm and Rocky editor Jay Ambrose and editorial page editor Vince Carroll asking questions.
The “angry and emotional” debate – as the Washington Post called it – covered a wide range of topics, from nuclear power to the environment, from competing proposals to simplify the tax system to Clinton’s budding reputation for playing loose with the truth.
In an upset that would prove to be a highlight of his campaign, Brown finished first in the Colorado primary, a few points ahead of Clinton, with Tsongas close behind and the others further back.
Two decades later, when Colorado was considered the quintessential swing state, it was the undisputed center of the political universe for one night on October 3, 2012. That was when President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney – ahead of his election to the U.S. Senate from Utah – met on stage inside the University of Denver’s Ritchie Center for the first presidential debate of that election.
An estimated 67 million Americans tuned in to the 90-minute debate, devoted to domestic politics and hosted by Jim Lehrer of PBS.
After days of pageantry and citywide hype, dozens of A-list political luminaries descended on DU that night to watch and spin what is mostly remembered as Obama’s stumble out of the door, when a fiery Romney kept the incumbent on his heels for nearly the entire debate, briefly panicking his supporters amid what appeared to be a neck and neck race.
UA political science professor Seth Masket suggested immediately after the debate that Obama’s poor performance might not cast as dark a shadow as some feared.
“We know that presidential debates don’t necessarily have a huge effect on voters – at most it’s like 2 or 3 points, but we’re in an election where the margin could be considerably less than that, so something that could swing something that much could be key,” he said, adding that the debate was about trying to reach the still undecided slice of a hugely polarized electorate.
The last time Colorado hosted a presidential-level debate was on October 28, 2015, when the third of twelve Republican primary debates of the 2016 cycle was held at the Coors Events Center on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus. Titled “Your Money, Your Vote” by sponsor CNBC, the debate was split into a main event and an undercard, featuring 10 candidates who met the primetime polling criteria and four others who did not take the stage two hours earlier.
Besides Trump and Christie, who are running again eight years later, the headliners were Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, surgeon Ben Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former New York Gov. George Pataki filled the undercard slots.
Both parts of the debate — spanning more than four hours in total and derided as a “cage match” by Cruz — were ostensibly about the economy, but left contestants and viewers alike to complain that moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick were uncharacteristically combative and continued to stray off topic. Besides embittering the RNC over CNBC’s sister operation, NBC News, which lost host status for later debate, the Boulder showdown left little mark on the primary.
