Now that Saratoga County primaries are over, there are a different set of primaries on the horizon!
The first debates of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary will take place over two nights. They are being hosted by ABC – more on how the debates work can be found here.
There will be 20 candidates who qualified – and this year the DNC is using new rules. In addition to raw national polls, the DNC is using a new criteria to allow qualification – 65,000 unique donors across 20 different states – to place emphasis on grassroots support rather than large institutional donors (i.e. interest groups) or high-wealth individuals. You can read more about that here.
The 20 candidates who met the threshold to appear in the first debates (links to read more about them):
Former Vice President Joe Biden
Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro
Former Representative John Delaney
Former Governor John Hickenlooper
Former Representative Beto O’Rourke
Governor Steve Bullock, previously reported to have been one of the qualifiers, was dropped based on some of the polls being dropped by the DNC as qualifiying polls.
Our own County Supervisor Tara Gaston (D-Saratoga Springs) will be live-tweeting during the debates Wednesday and Thursday night to provide the condensed-down version for policies and positions that can impact us in Saratoga County. You can follow her commentary here or on Twitter @VoteGaston