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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - October 1, 2015
From Ballotpedia
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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential Briefing was sponsored by the Leadership Project for America. | ||||
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Thursday's Leading Stories
- CNBC announced its criteria for the third set of Republican debates on October 28, 2015. To qualify for the undercard debate, a candidate must register at least 1 percent support in a “recognized” national poll. The primetime debate’s criteria require a candidate have an average of 3 percent support in polls conducted by NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN and Bloomberg. According to NPR, Rand Paul may have to participate in the undercard debate given his recent performance in polls. Jim Gilmore and Lindsey Graham currently do not qualify for either debate segment. (CNBC, NPR)
- Poll: According to a Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin voters released on Wednesday, Donald Trump leads the Republican field in the state with 20 percent support. Ben Carson and Marco Rubio follow with 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Hillary Clinton retains her lead in Wisconsin with 42 percent to Bernie Sanders’ 30 percent. (Marquette University Law School Poll)
- Poll: In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll released on Wednesday, 72 percent of Latinos have a negative view of Trump. This was 45 points higher than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. (NBC News, Data)
- Poll: Although Trump was the first choice for 23 percent of respondents in a new Suffolk University/USA Today national poll, his favorability rating was 27 percent, the lowest of any candidate polled. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina were tied for second with 13 percent each. (Suffolk University)
Democrats
Joe Biden
- The first Democratic primary filing deadline is November 9, 2015, in Arkansas. Nineteen other states have deadlines before the New Hampshire primary takes place in February 2016. If Biden were to fail to make any of these deadlines, his chances of being competitive in the primary would be hampered by missed opportunities to collect delegates. (Fortune)
- Sources close to Biden claim he is not preparing for the first Democratic primary debate and will delay a presidential announcement until the end of October. (CNN)
Lincoln Chafee
- In an interview on “The Alan Colmes Show” on Wednesday, Lincoln Chafee said Hillary Clinton has a “credibility issue.” He also said he did not understand how candidates like Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, who have never held elective office, were doing so well. ”Even Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California first,” said Chafee. (Fox News)
Hillary Clinton
- U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested on Tuesday that the Select Committee on Benghazi could take credit for causing Clinton’s poll numbers to drop. He said, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Cause she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.” Although the committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has maintained the committee was not formed with the intention of investigating Clinton individually, Clinton’s supporters have pointed to McCarthy’s statement as evidence to the contrary. “Kevin McCarthy’s admission that the Benghazi Committee is a taxpayer funded political hit job to bring down Hillary Clinton should be the final straw for the media, for Members of Congress, for taxpayers and for the families of the four Americans who died in the Benghazi tragedy,” David Brock, a Clinton supporter, said in a statement. (Politico)
- Wendy Davis, a former Texas state senator, endorsed Clinton on Wednesday. (Austin American-Statesman)
- The State Department released 6,300 pages of Clinton’s emails on Wednesday. The fifth batch to be released, these documents include 215 retroactively classified emails. (Politico)
- On Wednesday, Clinton criticized Congress for not reauthorizing the James Zadroga Act, which provides health services and financial assistance to sick 9/11 workers and their families. (New York Daily News)
- Clinton raised $28 million over the last quarter, according to The New York Times. (The New York Times)
Lawrence Lessig
- According to Forbes, Lawrence Lessig said Congress has been unable to address student loan reform or properly evaluate the “testing industry...born in light of No Child Left Behind” because of contributions from the banking and testing industries. He also stated his support for “openly licensed educational materials” to reduce the cost of textbooks. (Forbes)
Bernie Sanders
- Bernie Sanders’ campaign announced on Wednesday that it received 1 million contributions at a pace faster than President Obama did in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns. His fundraising tally for the last quarter was $24 million. (Boston.com, The New York Times)
Republicans
- Discussing the Republican presidential field on Wednesday, Mitt Romney said the primary contest would ultimately be between an “insurgent” candidate and a “mainstream” conservative. He also stated the tone of the election so far will likely harm the eventual Republican nominee in the general election. (The Atlantic)
- All 15 Republican candidates have met South Carolina’s filing deadline to qualify for its primary. At a cost of $40,000, it is the most expensive filing fee in the country. (NBC News)
Jeb Bush
- Jeb Bush described Rubio as his follower in an interview on Wednesday with CNN’s Dana Bash. He said of his time as governor of Florida, “I'm a proven leader. I disrupted the old order in Tallahassee. I relied on people like Marco Rubio and many others to follow my leadership and we moved the needle." (CNN)
- In a radio interview, Bush said the Washington Redskins should not be required to change their name. “I don’t think politicians ought to be having any say about that, to be honest with you. I don’t find it offensive. Native American tribes generally don’t find it offensive,” Bush added. Daniel Snyder, the team’s owner, contributed $100,000 to a super PAC backing Bush in July 2015. (ABC News)
Ben Carson
- Ben Carson suggested the environment of Nazi Germany could develop in the United States if “people don’t speak up for what they believe.” He said, "If you go back and look at the history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts, it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech." (CNN)
- In a speech at the University of New Hampshire on Wednesday, Carson recounted stories from his youth where he taunted police officers. “That was back in the day before they would shoot you. I'm just kidding, you know they wouldn't do that,” he said before expressing his respect for police officers. (NBC News)
- Comparing his tax plan to Donald Trump’s, Carson said on Wednesday, “I support a plan that is much flatter and fairer. I also strongly believe that every American should pay something according to their means. We are all Americans and we all have the same rights and responsibilities." (CNN)
Ted Cruz
- Iowa state Sen. Randy Feenstra (R), who previously supported Scott Walker, endorsed Ted Cruz on Wednesday. (CNN)
Lindsey Graham
- In an interview with Mic on Wednesday, Lindsey Graham discussed the Republican Party, demographics, campaign finance and the Black Lives Matter movement. Graham also said super PACs “can do a lot of damage” with the unlimited contributions they receive, and predicted that the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries “will be about who sucks the least.” (Mic)
Mike Huckabee
- Mike Huckabee said Congress and its priorities were “pathetic and absolutely absurd” for funding Planned Parenthood when veteran healthcare could be improved. (Breitbart)
- In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Thursday, Huckabee emphasized his “outsider” status. Speaking of his Republican competitors, Huckabee said, “You know, I find it a little interesting that some of these guys say they're outsiders. They live in Washington most of the time. They have a Washington address. They get their paycheck from Washington. I'm not sure how that makes them an outsider.” (Washington Examiner)
John Kasich
- John Kasich said on Wednesday it was time “to move on” from the debate over same-sex marriage. "I'm a believer that faith is about the do's and not the don'ts and I also believe that faith is about grace. I made it clear I don't agree with the Supreme Court's decision but I'm going to respect the Supreme Court's decision,” Kasich said. (Newsmax)
- A white paper prepared by the conservative Club for Growth warns that Kasich’s “mixed record on matters of economic liberty” should be of concern to fiscal conservatives. The paper highlighted Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, the high rate of spending in Ohio and his push to increase taxes on oil and gas extraction. (Politico)
Bobby Jindal
- Curt Anderson, Bobby Jindal’s chief strategist, said the CNBC debate criteria for the third Republican debate nullifies the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. "What happened to the notion of measuring candidate progress in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire? Did they somehow become irrelevant in the last three days? What was the RNC's role in this? Perhaps they long for the idea of just a national primary, which would enable candidates to not have to actually go out and mingle with real voters, making it easier for an establishment candidate who has the most money to simply purchase the nomination with a blizzard of advertising,” Anderson wrote in a statement. (Washington Examiner)
- Jindal's administration is planning to spend $830,000 on court appeals in an attempt to prevent the use of Common Core education standards in Louisiana. (NOLA.com)
Rand Paul
- Rand Paul announced endorsements from state legislators in Nevada, Minnesota, Kansas and Utah on Thursday. (Politico)
Marco Rubio
- On Wednesday, Marco Rubio stated he supports emergency contraception in cases of rape and incest. “[W]e have treatments available early on after an incident that can prevent that fertilization from happening. And that’s why I support the morning-after pill being available over the counter and I certainly support them being made available immediately for rape victims,” Rubio said. (International Business Times, Huffington Post)
- In an op-ed for the National Review on Thursday, Rubio called for the reform of higher education accreditation. Rubio wrote that students at technical schools, online colleges, and other alternative institutions should have the same access to federal financial aid as traditional colleges. (National Review)
- Idaho State Controller Brandon Woolf will chair Rubio’s campaign in Idaho. (Times-News)
Rick Santorum
- Although Rick Santorum said a gay couple could produce “a very positive and nurturing environment” for a child, he maintained same-sex marriage would destroy the nuclear family. “When you have a law that says, as the [Supreme Court] said, that marriage has nothing to do with children anymore, then what you're gonna have, is you're not gonna a society encouraging the behavior that is in the best interest of children and the future of society,” said Santorum on Wednesday. (Huffington Post)
Donald Trump
- On Wednesday, Donald Trump said the Syrian refugee crisis “could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time.” He suggested many of the refugees could be part of ISIS and pledged to send them “back” if he became president. (NBC News)
- Javier Palomarez, the president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, defended his decision to invite Trump to a question-and-answer session scheduled for October 8, after he received backlash from the organization’s membership. “Whether or not we should ignore certain candidates is not the question here. The real question is: should we allow any of the candidates to ignore us? I think we all can agree, the answer is a resounding, no,” Palomarez said. (Politico)
- Trump said Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio do not have a genuine mentor-mentee relationship on Wednesday. “They hate each other. They hate, trust me I know. They hate so much. They hate more than anybody in this room hates their neighbor,” he said. (CBS News)
- On Tuesday, Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his leadership and expressed support for Russia’s airstrikes in Syria. He explained, “Putin is now taking over what we started and he's going into Syria, and he frankly wants to fight ISIS, and I think that's a wonderful thing.” (CBS News)
See also
- Presidential election, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Important dates in the 2016 presidential race
- Polls and Straw polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
