The Republican National Committee on Thursday voted to withdraw its participation from the Commission on Presidential Debates the organization that has sponsored general election debates for the past three decades.
The unanimous vote comes as no surprise as the RNC had been preparing to pull out of the commission because of GOP concerns about credibility and bias in the presidential debates.
“Debates are an important part of the democratic process, and the RNC is committed to free and fair debates,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Thursday. “The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage.”
“Today, the RNC voted to withdraw from the biased CPD, and we are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” she added.
In January, McDaniel wrote a letter to commission co-chairs Frank Fahrenkopf and Kenneth Wollack that detailed the ongoing talks the two groups have had since March 2021. The RNC listed a slew of concerns with the commission’s practices, including the timing of the 2024 presidential debates, changes to debate procedures without prior notification, the selection of debate moderators who allegedly represent a conflict of interest, and failing to maintain nonpartisanship among commission board members.
The commission was founded in 1987 by both parties and labels itself as nonpartisan, though Republicans have long complained that it favors Democrats. The scrutiny increased when then-candidate Donald Trump argued that debate moderators were biased against him in 2016. Trump reportedly claimed the same in 2020.
The RNC withdrawal does not mean that presidential and vice presidential debates will no longer happen, but that Republican candidates will no longer participate in commission debates. A possible outcome would be campaigns directly engaging with each other to set up debates going forward, which would mark a significant shift in the decades-old tradition of commission-sponsored debates.
“We look forward to exploring other avenues for candidates to have a free and fair forum for all Americans,” the press release said.
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