In 2016, the Democratic National Committee was exposed for deeply ingrained corruption which ensured anti-establishment candidates advocating for real change were pushed aside. It’s not at all surprising that their pattern of scale-tipping has continued into the 2020 election cycle.

The Mike Gravel 2020 Campaign Staff has called the DNC offices nearly 200 times since the launch of our campaign. Yet, most times we get this message, recorded by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, without the line ringing even once:

Imagine hearing this 200 times…

“Thank you for calling the Democratic National Committee. Your call is important to us. Please hold on the line and someone will be with you shortly”

Except, no one is ever with you shortly. In those 200 attempts, we spoke to a real person three times. The first person told us they’d call back, the second transferred us to a voicemail that was never returned, and the third tried to send us back to the front desk. We’ve left messages and sent e-mails and scoured our contact lists for someone who might give us the time of day. After hundreds of man-hours with no results, we’re left with only one conclusion: we’re being stonewalled.

To this day, we have yet to get in contact with someone with authority over debate qualifications. That means we have no more information than what is publicly available. That is completely unacceptable.

Campaigns like ours are deliberately put at a disadvantage in qualifying for the debates because we’re run by real people, not political insiders with 20 DNC staffers on speed dial. We are less than a month out from the debates, and we still have only the DNC press release to go off of. I can guarantee that Joe Biden’s campaign isn’t having this problem. How are we supposed to structure a campaign strategy without clear deadlines, or even knowing who to send our fundraising info to?

We probably shouldn’t be surprised that we’re being blacklisted, considering the mainstream media’s coverage of our campaign. Despite outpacing numerous “serious” candidates in polling and fundraising, we’re repeatedly left off of polls and campaign coverage. These issues with the DNC are just another way for the establishment to stifle real change. As expected, the entire Democratic Party political machine is working against subversive candidates and in favor of warmongering corporate hacks.