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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - October 16, 2015
From Ballotpedia
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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential Briefing was sponsored by the Leadership Project for America. | ||||
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Friday's Leading Stories
- Ben Carson and Donald Trump have threatened to boycott the next Republican presidential debate on CNBC if the debate is longer than 2 hours. In a joint letter on Thursday, the candidates wrote, “To be clear, neither of our campaigns agreed to either the length you propose or your ban on opening or closing statements. In fact, neither of our campaigns were even consulted.” CNBC responded: “Our goal is to host the most substantive debate possible. ... We started a dialogue yesterday with all of the campaigns involved and we will certainly take the candidates’ views on the format into consideration as we finalize the debate structure.” (NBC News, Scribd, The Washington Post)
- John Kasich unveiled his fiscal platform on Thursday. Under “The Kasich Action Plan,” he would work to establish a federal balanced budget amendment, reduce the number of income tax brackets to three, cap the top income tax rate at 28 percent and establish a one-year moratorium on “all major, new regulations.” Kasich also pledged to significantly reduce the size and authority of the Department of Transportation and the Department of Education. (CNN, The Huffington Post, John Kasich for President)
- The New York Times has prepared a chart showing third quarter fundraising totals for both Democratic and Republican candidates. Hillary Clinton leads with $29.9 million raised in the last three months. Jim Webb, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Jim Gilmore and Lincoln Chafee all reported fundraising totals of less than $1 million. (The New York Times)
- Poll: In an NBC News online poll released on Friday, 56 percent of Democratic-leaning voters said Hillary Clinton performed best in Tuesday night’s debate. Bernie Sanders followed with 33 percent. Jim Webb was considered the weakest performer by 25 percent of respondents. (NBC News)
- Poll: Public Policy Polling conducted several presidential matchups in a survey of Pennsylvania voters released on Thursday. Joe Biden beat all Republicans he was matched against, performing an average of about 6 points better than Hillary Clinton did in matchups with Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. (Public Policy Polling)
Democrats
Joe Biden
- The Associated Press reported on Friday that Ted Kaufman, a political adviser to Joe Biden, sent an email to Biden’s supporters urging them to be ready “yesterday” for a potential presidential run. "If he runs, he will run because of his burning conviction that we need to fundamentally change the balance in our economy and the political structure to restore the ability of the middle class to get ahead," Kaufman wrote. (Associated Press)
- Biden continued to dodge questions on whether he will run for president on Thursday. When pressed by journalists while waiting to greet South Korean President Park Geun-hye at his residence, Biden joked he couldn’t hear the reporters and that he would give an answer in Korean. (Politico)
Hillary Clinton
- After Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro (D) formally endorsed Hillary Clinton on Thursday, Clinton hinted she would consider him for a role in her administration if she became president. "I think really highly of him, and I am thrilled to have his endorsement today. Both he and his twin brother are just among the best young leaders in America . . . I am going to really look hard at him for anything because that’s how good he is, and he deserves the accolades he’s receiving.” (ABC News)
- On Friday, one of Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin, will have a closed-door interview with the House Select Committee on Benghazi. “The Committee’s focus on Huma (as opposed to numerous intelligence and defense community officials still outstanding) is additional evidence that the actual attack in Benghazi, and its lessons about how we might better protect diplomats serving in dangerous places, are the last things on the committee’s mind,” Clinton’s campaign said in a statement on Thursday. (Politico)
Martin O’Malley
- Martin O’Malley raised $1.3 million in the third quarter, according to his Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing. (Washington Times)
Bernie Sanders
- Following the first Democratic presidential debate, CNN reported that Bernie Sanders’ campaign intended to shift its strategy to focus on more intimate gatherings in early voting states like Iowa rather than the large rallies he has held in predominantly liberal cities. "At the beginning we had to do something to create that excitement, we started from nothing. Now that we've gotten this going, we're going to move towards a period of persuasion. We've got something to work with now. Now we go and persuade voters,” said Tad Devine, an adviser to Sanders. (CNN)
- Sanders rejected a personal contribution of $2,700 from Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli gained notoriety last month for increasing the price of one of his company’s drugs by 4,000 percent. Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Sanders, said the campaign donated the money to a health clinic in Washington, D.C. “We are not keeping the money from this poster boy for drug company greed,” Briggs said. (Sun Times)
Jim Webb
- On Thursday, Jim Webb said he appeared irritated at the first Democratic presidential debate because it “was being portrayed as a showdown” between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. He said, “In that kind of environment, it was either going to be Mr. Angry or a potted plant.” (The New York Times)
- Webb’s son wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on Thursday to defend his father for mentioning at the debate a man he killed in combat while fighting in the Vietnam War. “CNN introduced him as a ’war hero,’ and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed. Yes, the man who threw the grenade isn’t around anymore, but more importantly the man who my Father shielded with his own body lived to see another day,” wrote Webb. (The Washington Post)
Republicans
- Several Republican candidates responded to President Obama’s announcement yesterday that he would delay the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Mike Huckabee called the decision “political pandering & empty promises” and Rand Paul said it was "a mistake.” Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum all suggested they believed it was the right decision. (CNN)
Jeb Bush
- When asked on Wednesday if he believed race was a factor contributing to cycles of poverty in African-American and Latino communities, Jeb Bush answered, “If you want to lift people up to give people the power to make choices for themselves, rather than trap them in a situation of interdependency. This has nothing to do with race, nothing at all. It has to do with people being born poor, staying poor, because we have systems on top of them that put lids on their aspirations.” (The Washington Post)
- Bush’s campaign reported it raised $13.4 million in the past quarter and has $10.3 million on hand. (The Wall Street Journal)
- Bush posted a letter to his 2016 presidential campaign website from his personal physician stating he was “in excellent physical and mental condition and able to serve in any stressful and demanding executive setting including the Office of the President of the United States.” (CNN)
- In his recent stump speeches, Bush has incorporated his position on whether the Redskins should change its name because of the word’s pejorative connotation. “There’s a legitimate reason why people are angry. Look at Washington, D.C. You know, I was asked on a sports talk show, I was asked my views on the Washington Redskins. And I said look, you know, there’s a lot of big pressing problems here; I don’t think we need to be so politically correct, and try to, through government, take the name Redskins off. If that’s what they want, leave them alone, for crying out loud. Let’s worry about the complicated nature of our regulations and taxes and other things,” said Bush. (The Washington Post)
- In an interview on Iowa Public Radio, Bush said he would support “trade with Cuba when Cuba is free. The difference between China and Cuba is China has huge economic opportunities for us. Cuba is a country of 11 million people, impoverished, and it's a dictatorship. Any efforts taken by the Obama administration right now has not gotten anything in return.” (Iowa Public Radio)
Ben Carson
- Although some media outlets have reported that Ben Carson has temporarily suspended his campaign to promote his new book, Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager, said on Thursday, “Dr. Carson does have a book out that he's talking about on the campaign trail, but he's also talking about issues. He's talking about his policies. It's a very delicate situation but Dr. Carson has not suspended (his campaign).” (CNN)
Chris Christie
- In the last three months, Chris Christie has raised $4.2 million and spent $2.8 million. (The Wall Street Journal)
Ted Cruz
- Ted Cruz condemned State Department spokesman John Kirby for stating Israel had committed “acts of terrorism.” In an interview with The Washington Free Beacon on Thursday, Cruz said, “Once again Sec. Kerry and his staff have proven themselves utterly unfit for the positions they hold. Mr. Kirby should immediately retract his offensive assertion that Israel is ‘guilty of acts of terror’ or resign, and Secretary Kerry should immediately disavow these remarks or resign.” (Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon)
Carly Fiorina
- During an appearance last week on “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Carly Fiorina said “eminent domain has been abused . . . by the collusion between governments eager for revenue and businesses eager for competitive advantage. So I find the [Kelo v. City of New London] case—if ever there was a case for judicial engagement instead of judicial restraint, it's this set of issues.” Kelo was a 2005 Supreme Court interpreting what constituted “public use” for a legitimate taking of land by eminent domain. (Reason)
- Fiorina’s campaign reported it raised $3.5 million in the third quarter. More than 40 percent of that fundraising total came in the last two weeks of the quarter following Fiorina’s participation in the second Republican debate. (The Wall Street Journal)
- State Rep. Frank Kotowski (R) has joined Carly Fiorina’s leadership team in New Hampshire along with eight other party leaders in the state. “I believe that Carly’s background and real world business experience makes her well-positioned to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016,” Kotowski said in a statement. (New Hampshire Union Leader)
Jim Gilmore
- Jim Gilmore reported he had raised $106,000 in the last three months, and $43,000 of those contributions came from Gilmore, himself. (Politico)
Lindsey Graham
- In an op-ed for CNBC on Thursday, Lindsey Graham explained how he would prevent “the coming debt crisis.” Graham’s plan included raising the retirement age for Social Security, eliminating the payroll tax and “expanding rehabilitation and work opportunities for those on disability.” He would also cap individual and corporate tax deductions and require that “[a]ny new revenues would have to be paired with spending cuts in a 3:1 ratio of cuts to revenues.” (CNBC)
- Graham raised $1.1 million in the third quarter, a little more than half of what he spent – $2 million. (Bloomberg)
- On Thursday, Graham said the Democratic presidential debate made him “sick.” He singled out the Democratic candidates’ positions on national security issues, saying, “If I were ISIL, the ayatollah, Assad I would be pulling for the Democrats because their foreign policy is leading further from behind than Obama. Bernie Sanders would shut down the NSA program so we couldn’t detect the next terrorist attack. Everybody had an isolationist, disengagement policy regarding radical Islam.” (BuzzFeed)
Mike Huckabee
- When a radio talk show host asked Mike Huckabee if he agreed that it would be better if convicts were indentured, Huckabee responded, “Well, it really would be. Sometimes the best way to deal with a nonviolent criminal behavior is what you just suggested.” (Salon)
- In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwoord on Thursday, Huckabee said a defining characteristic of the populist Republican economic platform was “that we stop punishing people for their productivity. It's one of the reasons, John, that I still think that the fair tax, the tax that would be placed on our consumption instead of on our productivity, would be a dramatic turn. It would help, I think, the entire economy from top to bottom.” (CNBC)
Bobby Jindal
- Bobby Jindal’s campaign reported it only had $260,000 in cash on hand in its third quarter filing with the FEC. (The Atlantic)
John Kasich
- John Kasich raised $4.375 million in the third quarter and has $2.66 million in cash remaining. (The Wall Street Journal)
Rand Paul
- Rand Paul’s campaign released a memo to journalists on Thursday stating the reasons why Paul was remaining in the presidential race despite “some in the media who are pushing a false narrative that [he] is on the ropes.” The memo highlighted his organization in early voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa and outreach to college students through Students for Rand. (Business Insider)
- In the last three months, Paul’s campaign has raised $2.5 million. (The Washington Post)
Marco Rubio
- Chris Wolfe, a New Hampshire Republican Party leader who previously endorsed Scott Walker, has joined Marco Rubio’s campaign as his state co-chair in New Hampshire. (WMUR)
- Rubio’s campaign raised $13 million in the last three months. (Breitbart)
Rick Santorum
- According to his FEC filing on Thursday, Rick Santorum raised $390,000 in the third quarter. (BuzzFeed)
Donald Trump
- On Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted a photo of Chris Christie with a link to a recent poll of New Jersey voters showing 67 percent want Christie to withdraw from the presidential race. Trump captioned the photo, “A great day in New Jersey for Trump!” (Twitter, MSNBC)
- Although Trump has highlighted his plans to self-finance his presidential campaign, his latest FEC filing shows he raised $3.7 million from “unsolicited donations” in the third quarter. Over the same time period, Trump invested $90,000 in his own campaign. (The Wall Street Journal)
- Trump criticized three Fox News contributors on Thursday night, tweeting, “Megyn Kelly has two really dumb puppets, Chris Stirewalt & Marc Threaten (a Bushy) who do exactly what she says. All polls say I won debates.” (CNN Money)
- Earlier this week at the No Labels conference, when an Asian-American student asked Trump to clarify statements he made about relations between the U.S. and South Korea, Trump interrupted the young man to ask if he was “from South Korea.” The student responded he was “born in Texas, raised in Colorado.” He continued, “No matter where I'm from, I like to get my facts straight, and I wanted to tell you that that's not true. South Korea paid $861 million [for U.S. military support].” (The Huffington Post)
- Trump said he has been seeking Secret Service protection given the number of people who attend his campaign rallies. “We had 20,000 people in Dallas, Texas. We had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama, and 20,000 in Oklahoma, and I know this: If I was a Democrat, they’d have it,” Trump said on Thursday. (Washington Times)
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
