Two weeks after the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, several candidates scraping the bottom of primary polls are still seething about their treatment — and ripping party leadership for what they describe as, at best careless, and at worst intentional, decisions that embarrassed them on national TV.

POLITICO reached out to the seven campaigns who faced off in an Aug. 6 undercard debate on Fox News, and several vented about the Republican National Committee — which has adopted a more assertive role in guiding the presidential debate process — arguing that its leadership reinforced the optics of what, by many, had been derided as the “loser” debate.


“Our concern is that the party was putting its thumb on the scale,” said an aide to one of the seven undercard campaigns. “It’s really important for the party to be unbiased and fair arbiter in this process to allow voters a chance to hear from all candidates. Unfortunately, certain things took place in the last debate that hopefully will be corrected in the debates to come.”

Though they mostly spoke on condition of anonymity, their complaints were wide-ranging and often overlapping: From contradictory communications about who, if anyone, would be allowed in the arena, which was largely empty during the debate, to a since-deleted tweet by an RNC staffer of Chairman Reince Priebus peering down at the nearly deserted facility, to a decision by the RNC — which held its summer meetings in Cleveland the same week — to hold a rules session and two receptions while the seven candidates were onstage.

Adding to the insult was the energy and enthusiasm that accompanied the prime-time Republican debate later the same night, featuring the top 10 candidates and an arena packed with 5,000 raucous attendees.

National Republican officials largely dismiss the complaints as the wails of struggling campaigns, who in an earlier election cycle might not have had the opportunity to debate on TV at all. Their summer meeting, they noted, was scheduled months ahead of the decision to hold the undercard debate, and federal laws and regulations block the RNC from playing much of a direct role in debate logistics anyway. Rather, they noted, Fox handled the timing and audience decisions surrounding the debate.

“Whoever is spreading this rumor is one of the following: totally out of the loop, totally stupid or just a complainer who doesn’t have or care about facts. Not true at all,” said an RNC spokeswoman.

National Republicans also note that the debates later in the schedule won’t be at arenas nearly as large as the first, which will make ticketing a less prominent concern.

The RNC has begun holding twice-monthly conference calls with all the campaigns to ensure their questions are answered and there’s no lingering confusion about the next round of debates. One of those calls, held Wednesday morning, featured a discussion of ticketing procedures for future debates.

Some RNC members were quick to defend the committee from charges of bias against the bottom-tier candidates. One member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the complaints from the campaigns about the first debate were off-base.

“Everything I know about that is just the opposite. I don’t know anybody who didn’t get anything they wanted,” the member said, noting that some RNC members who decided to attend the first debate anyway were allowed in, despite the audience restrictions.

The decision to keep the audience out, the member added, was primarily for logistical reasons: If a full audience attended the undercard debate, there wouldn’t have been enough time before the primetime debate to clear the arena and do security screening on a brand new audience. So organizers were faced with a dilemma: either require attendees to enter the arena ahead of the first debate and remain inside for as long as nine hours – the duration of both debates and post-debate spin room activity – or stick the undercard debaters with a virtually empty arena.

But the campaigns of the bottom-tier candidates, still smarting, worry that their experience at the first debate portends more trouble ahead. Many were quick to note that the RNC has long touted the goal of holding a brief and orderly primary that quickly elevates a presumptive nominee to prevent the prolonged bloodletting many believe helped sink Mitt Romney in 2012.

The stakes of the first debates were clear. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina delivered a standout performance and is hoping to ride the momentum all the way to a spot in CNN’s top 10 candidate debate on Sept. 16. She outperformed many of her rivals, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who stumbled his way through the event, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who heard uncomfortable silence after cracking a joke about Hillary Clinton, and former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, who barely registered.

The post-debate frustration has been intense. “The decision to have the debate in that big hall without an audience was stupid, but everyone knows that. It was just dumb. It looked silly,” said Curt Anderson, an adviser to the campaign of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. “If you’re not going to have an audience — and by the way, why wouldn’t you? You have all the RNC members in Cleveland … it was just poor production.”

And some campaigns told POLITICO that even though they were irritated about having to debate in front of an empty arena, it was ensuing indignities that were the most infuriating — and some pinned the blame more squarely on Fox.

“I walked out of there completely batsh— pissed because Fox promised us that they wouldn’t show shots of an empty arena,” said one adviser to an undercard campaign. “Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews could’ve ran this debate. It would’ve been just the same or maybe even better on MSNBC.”

At the last minute, advisers said, Fox informed the candidates that they would be allowed to invite 10 family members or friends into the arena for the early debate, contributing to a rapidly changing and confusing atmosphere.

“It’s kind of bizarre,” said a source close to one of the undercard participants. “Here they are [the RNC] trying to own the debate process, but my perception was, when a candidate was getting upset about the process they’re saying, ‘Go talk to Fox.’”

Overall, there’s been plenty of finger-pointing in different directions. Though the RNC indicated Fox was primarily responsible for handling event logistics, the network said the Ohio Republican Party did most of the work. The state party told POLITICO that it contracted with Fox and helped distribute tickets — with assistance from the RNC. “The RNC certainly partnered with us — a number of aspects of this debate,” said Ohio GOP executive director Katie Eagan. “They’re going to be the main entity moving forward, so they were helpful in a number of ways.”

But Eagan added that the decision to keep the audience out of the 5 p.m. debate was made well before the party’s involvement.

The seven GOP candidates were selected to participate in the forum based on their rank in an average of the five most recent national political polls. | Getty

“We in no way wanted to slight any campaign or any candidate and in no way did we want to or did we have any aim to embarrass anyone at all,” she said. “If it came off that way, that’s certainly regretful.”

As the debate approached and the candidates’ questions grew, the RNC began to direct more of their complaints to Fox, they said.

“My sense was, that’s when [the RNC] started to abdicate responsibility, to say, ‘it’s not our responsibility, you can’t be mad at us, be mad at the networks,’ even though they set this up from the beginning,” said a source.

Some of the campaign advisers indicated that in Wednesday’s conference call, the RNC signaled that CNN will take a more prominent role in ticketing the next debate.

The event will be held in a relatively small space at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and ground rules about the debate — the seven-guest limit per candidate onstage, for example — are largely coming from those hosts, not the RNC.

“I’m happy that they’ve stepped away, candidly,” said one adviser. “I’ll take my chances with the network. It can’t get any worse.”

Dylan Byers contributed reporting.