AP Photo CNN's three-hour debate from hell Marathon encounter tried the patience of candidates, operatives, and viewers.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — By the third hour of CNN's GOP presidential debate, the candidates looked like long-distance runners fading in the final lap: A sweating Marco Rubio ran his hands through his hair, Chris Christie's face turned red, a sagging Donald Trump grasped his lectern for support and, at times, seemed to crumple into his suit.

By the time moderator Jake Tapper asked each of the 11 participants to pick a Secret Service code name, a question meant to provoke bright responses but that fell flat, the combatants were out of gas and operatives were getting restless for the post-debate spin room.


The second GOP debate was, in the nearly unanimous opinion of the campaigns, both too long and too loosely governed.

"It was a little bit like a Charles Dickens story. It might've been good, but it would've been better if there had been an editor involved,"quipped Terry Sullivan, Rubio's campaign manager.

Part of the blame went to Tapper, who had vowed before taking the stage as moderator for the first time on a presidential debate to host a "real" encounter — with the candidates actually talking to one another. He got that — and more.

The 11 candidates frequently talked over one another trying to get one last jab in. At some points, it seemed like Tapper was a teacher trying to control a class of overexcited third-graders.

"He's referred to me, can I respond?"

"After I respond then I'll give the floor."

'You brought my issue up, can I …"

At one point, Tapper appeared to be throwing to a break when Mike Huckabee began talking. Tapper allowed the candidate to keep going.

"Frankly, I was really disappointed with the moderating," said Sarah Huckabee, the candidate's daughter and campaign spokeswoman. "I think they did a poor job with keeping the candidates on time. Certain candidates they just let run all over them; [with] other candidates they were a lot more forceful. The discrepancy in the time is outrageous for a three-hour debate."

Trump ended up having the most speaking time, with more than 19 minutes, according to anNPR count. Huckabee was toward the bottom, with just over nine minutes. Scott Walker was last with 8 minutes, 29 seconds.

"It's much better to have a bell or buzzer go off without involving the moderator [keeping time]," Fox News' Brit Hume commented on "The O'Reilly Factor." "Jake Tapper is a great journalist. But CNN did him no service by having the time work that way."

"I didn't know who was moderating," said Sen. Rand Paul's campaign manager, Chip Englander. 'It looked bad for CNN."

Even worse for the network, its hosts failed to make the strong impression that their Fox News counterparts Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace did in the first GOP debate.

Sharing the stage with Tapper, CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash and guest host Hugh Hewitt asked many sharp questions in the earlier undercard debate, with only four candidates. But when the action shifted to the main event, they disappeared for long stretches.

"For a while I wondered if Dana and Hugh Hewitt went for a coffee break with Mike Huckabee," joked Sullivan.

Behind the scenes, the operation faltered as well.

With both CNN and the Reagan Library handling logistics, campaigns complained of receiving conflicting information from different staff. All 15 candidates were supposed to take a photo together onstage ahead of the prime-time debate, but both Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham skipped out. A Jindal spokesperson said that his team decided they’d benefit more from the spin room than the photo op.

In the reporters' filing center, television cut out twice for minutes at a time, once losing video and once cutting away to a technician sitting in the spin room. Reporters were left scrambling for live streams on their computers.

Meanwhile, for the candidates, the debate stage only got hotter as the night wore on, and the faces started to shine with sweat.

CNN President Jeff Zucker defended the length of the debate, saying that with 11 candidates the network needed the time to get deep into the issues.

"I think we had a really excellent night," Zucker declared. "We feel great about it. Listen, we think it was an incredibly substantive debate that covered a lot of issues and that's what it's supposed to be. It's exactly how long we wanted it to be and covered all the issues we wanted it to get to."

Few seemed to agree.

"I'm not sure what the goal was," said Sullivan. "But certainly it devolved into a catfight between some candidates in many ways, and it was much more about who said what about whom and name calling and one-liners than it really was about substantive policy. It seemed only focused on creating fights."

