WASHINGTON — Most of the Republican campaigns for president were forging ahead Tuesday with an effort to renegotiate debate terms with host networks, even after Donald Trump appeared to blow up the negotiations by speaking with the networks separately.
Only three other campaigns — and only two of the campaigns that participated in Sunday night’s summit in Alexandria, Va. — have joined Trump. That leaves 10 campaigns, including the campaign of Trump’s fellow front-runner Ben Carson, mulling over changes to the letter that Ben Ginsberg, the unofficial chairman of the group, drafted as an approach to the networks. With no united front, they’re now talking about the letter as a guideline for what the campaigns can ask for.
“We’re still on board,” said Brett O’Donnell, a strategist for Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and one of the prime movers behind the unity strategy. “The thing that’s kind of being lost in this is that you are starting to hear the campaigns saying they’re going to start negotiating directly with the networks. That’s the most important thing coming out of this, when in times past, they’ve taken the network’s instructions. The only point they’re missing is that this isn’t so much as a rivalry between campaigns as it is making sure nobody gets screwed.”
In conversations Monday night and Tuesday morning, other campaigns — which did not receive a heads-up on Trump’s decision — expressed some surprise. Some insisted that the letter was worth finishing, but did so against the appearance of a stampede from three campaigns that adroitly used the effort’s media coverage against it.
The most energetic “no” on the letter came from the campaign of Carly Fiorina, the one major candidate who skipped Sunday’s meeting. In a widely distributed letter, Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager, Sara Isgur Flores, said the team skipped the meeting for “dinner at the Applebees in Pella, Iowa,” and chided the rebels for plotting “behind closed doors.”
“As we have expressed publicly, we encourage the RNC to sanction conservative networks such as the Blaze and One America News to host and moderate a debate,” Flores wrote. “We do not care whether it’s 67 degrees or our green room isn’t as plush as another candidate. Team Carly will not be signing this letter.”
That made some of the campaign strategists working on the demands bristle. The “green room” line was a reference to the seemingly random spaces given to campaigns at the recent CNBC debate at the University of Colorado. Fiorina’s campaign was given one of the swankiest spaces, complete with jacuzzi. Her campaign was retrospectively mocking the campaigns who had a problem with that.
To the negotiating campaigns, it looked as though Fiorina had chosen the most politically resonant response to the debate kerfuffle — and she was not alone. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose campaign had sent an emissary to Monday’s meeting, said the next day on “Fox and Friends” that the other contenders needed to “stop complaining.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign responded later in the day, spokesman Chris Schrimpf telling reporters that he’d be “declining to sign the letter,” while taking credit for the group’s decision “not to alter the Fox (Business) debate,” scheduled for Nov. 10.
“As the governor of Ohio,” said Schrimpf, “he is used to answering tough questions all the time.”
While 10 Republican campaigns disagreed with Kasich and the others, the party’s establishment was quietly encouraged by the disarray. The Trump campaign might have leverage when talking to networks. For example, the deep and much-despised chill in CU’s debate hall was seen as an overcorrection to complaints that the lengthy CNN debate made people sweat.
