The Republican National Committee is hoping to raise funds through the debates. | AP Photos RNC proposes its own debates

The Republican National Committee is proposing to sponsor a series of monthly presidential primary debates beginning in August and running through February in which the RNC would determine the format and require each participating candidate to raise money for the party at the event, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.

In a message sent Friday night, James Bopp, the party’s Indiana committeeman and chairman of a special debate committee, asked aides to potential GOP candidates to agree to six RNC-sanctioned debates in which “the RNC or its designee may at its discretion determine the time, place, co-sponsors, format , subject matter, moderators and participants.”


Under the plan, laid out in a one-page memo co-signed by RNC chief of staff Jeff Larson, the candidates would still be allowed to participate in other, nonparty sanctioned debates. But the RNC is offering an incentive to lure the hopefuls to their plan: access to the party’s vast fundraising list and voter file.

“Those candidates invited to participate in RNC-sanctioned debates will be allowed to participate in a list exchange with the RNC,” Bopp writes.

There’s no direct suggestion that any candidates who decline to join the party’s debates would be denied the lists, but that’s how at least one adviser to a potential candidate read it.

“Punishment,” said the adviser. “This is all about two things: hatred and mistrust of the media and money.”

There’s no doubt about the latter. The debt-racked national party, led by Chairman Reince Priebus, is working feverishly to raise money and is trying to be creative about how to pay back the $21 million they owed as of the end of February.

Bopp’s idea: make the candidates attend fundraisers held in conjunction with each month’s forum.

“If you participate in an RNC-sponsored debate you would attend a fundraising event the RNC may host at the debate in order to help raise money for the Presidential Trust,” he writes.

Bopp also suggests that the party’s attempt to sanction debates is related to concerns among Republicans about news organizations overseeing and moderating the events and that they’d prefer a format with more ideologically sympathetic moderators.

“We think we all agree the objective of the RNC-sanctioned debates would be to provide a fair and impartial forum for the Republican candidates to educate and inform voters about their candidacies in a series of candidate forums which are Party and grass-roots-driven rather than media driven,” he writes.

In a cover note to the memo, Bopp adds that the goal of the party debates would be to let the candidates “effectively get their message out to Republican voters and, thereby, to help Republican voters to choose the best candidate for the Republican nomination.”

An array of news outlets, including POLITICO, have set dates for Republican primary debates over the next year. Some of the planned sessions are being co-sponsored by state Republican parties and it’s possible that the RNC could simply sanction some of those or any of the other debates already scheduled.

But it remains uncertain whether this plan will ultimately come to fruition. When representatives of the candidates met with Priebus and Larson last month they expressed concern over the amount of debate requests they were facing and discussed whether the national party could bring some order to the process. But the idea was not to have the RNC create the possibility for more debates beyond those already scheduled.

Bopp concludes his memo by requesting that the campaigns-in-waiting “respond in writing at your earliest convenience to let us know if you accept this proposal.” But RNC communications director Sean Spicer suggested that the committee remains willing to discuss their plan with the potential candidates.

“We are interested in getting feedback from the potential presidential campaigns about what would work best,” he said. “It has the potential to bring a lot of order to the process.”

Spicer declined to say whether those candidates who didn’t participate would be denied access to the party’s lists, only reiterating that the RNC wanted to “get feedback” from the campaigns.

The Republican National Committee is proposing to sponsor a series of monthly presidential primary debates beginning in August and running through February in which the RNC would determine the format and require each participating candidate to raise money for the party at the event, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.