Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is one of six Democratic presidential candidates who have met the qualification criteria for the debate through their polling, but not through their donors. | Scott Olson/Getty Images 2020 Elections Desperate drive to make the debate stage shakes Dem campaigns Presidential campaigns are resorting to unusual tactics to qualify for the Democratic debate stage thanks to the new donor threshold.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand sank a ping-pong ball into a cup of water — a spin on the drinking game, beer pong — and turned the moment into a digital ad urging $1 donations to her presidential campaign. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is hawking bumper stickers for $1 donations and used his recent CNN town hall to make a televised plea for more campaign contributions. Former Rep. John Delaney promised to give $2 of his own money to charity for each of the next 100,000 individual donors who gave to his campaign.

The unconventional, often gimmicky fundraising arms race is part of a desperate scramble to make it past a new threshold set by the Democratic National Committee, 65,000 individual donors, to the first primary debates in June and July. The televised debates could be make-or-break showcases for the 2020 presidential candidates, and the requirement has reshaped the strategy of candidates struggling to cross the donor mark, changing spending priorities and altering the path of their campaigns.


Such is the importance of the debates that some presidential campaigns have decided to prioritize Facebook advertising over hiring staffers in early states, several campaign aides said. Others noted that the rules prioritize chasing viral moments early in the campaign over building traditional vote-getting infrastructure in Iowa and New Hampshire. But defenders of the new rules say that they have just forced campaigns to prove they can compete in the 21st century before the election year.

“The days of just financing [a campaign] in Iowa and New Hampshire are gone, especially in a 22-person field,” said former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, whose 2004 presidential campaign was a pioneer in online small-dollar fundraising. “I’d say to those candidates that haven’t passed the threshold, get to work.”

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

John Davis, a senior adviser to Delaney’s long-shot campaign, said that when the DNC requirements were released, “we adjusted our plan.”

“You start with the goal of winning Iowa, winning New Hampshire, but now we have to do this first,” Davis continued. “We always planned to invest in a small-dollar program, but we didn’t have a timetable.”

“It’s going to cause candidates to concentrate on fundraising as opposed to hiring staff and traveling to important primary states,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and called the DNC’s rules “troubling.” “It clearly advantages those candidates that announced early on or those candidates that already had fundraising bases.”

Candidates can also qualify for the debates by getting at least 1 percent in three approved polls. But campaigns are intent on hitting the donor threshold as well because the DNC has capped the number of debate participants at 20. If more than that number of candidates meet the polling or donor criteria, the committee will prioritize presidential contenders who met both. And there is pervasive concern that the DNC will continue to ratchet up the criteria for future debates, which have yet to be announced.

Six candidates — Gillibrand, Delaney, Inslee, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Reps. Tim Ryan and Eric Swalwell — have met the qualification criteria for the debate through their polling, but not through their donors. Sen. Cory Booker and Julian Castro both achieved 65,000 donors within the past few days, a victory Booker celebrated by personally FaceTiming with his 65,000th donor, a gun reform activist from Minnesota.

“We are holding off on strategic decision-making because it’s now about what the thresholds will be [to qualify for] debates three and four,” said a presidential campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss internal campaign strategy. “These rules incentivize going viral, going national rather than building an infrastructure in the states that can actually win a caucus.”

Another presidential campaign aide called the requirement “an existential threat,” especially given concerns that the DNC might take the requirements and ratchet them up to qualify for future debates in 2019. The donor criteria may “go up to 90,000 or 120,000,” the aide said. “That’s why it’s so important to hit 65,000, even for those of us who have hit the polling threshold.”

And several presidential campaigns wonder about the long-term impact of the rules, particularly if they’re ratcheted up for future debates, could make for a strained relationship with small-dollar donors who aren’t yet ready to commit to a candidate.

“There’s a stress associated with these asks to small-dollar donors, and I’m not sure it’s the right way to engage with voters,” said Jennifer Fiore, a senior adviser to Castro’s campaign. “Ultimately, donors control whether a candidate’s ideas are represented, or a community is represented. If we’re going to do that for the next year, it’s going to be very stressful for voters and campaigns.”

From the outside, there’s less sympathy for those positions.

“Social media and grassroots support has become a metric by which modern candidates are judged, and they may not like it, but it’s the new reality,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. “The game has changed and you’re either going to work within the new system or you’re going to have to get out.”

But there is also a clear intent to avoid “[repeating] what happened to Republicans in 2016,” a two-tier system that featured “varsity” and “junior varsity” debates, said Tom McMahon, the DNC’s executive director during the 2008 presidential cycle, “when Trump dominated everything.”

“So how do create a fair criteria?” McMahon added. “It’s not easy.”

"The DNC introduced a grassroots fundraising threshold to ensure that candidates in this historically large field have a fair opportunity to reach the debate stage, and because it reflects work that is critical to building a successful general election campaign," Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the DNC, said in a statement provided to POLITICO.

The rules have also opened up the process to unconventional candidates — at least those that can catch fire online. Andrew Yang, a businessman who’s running on a platform of a universal basic income and has weighed in against circumcision, has already hit both criteria for the debate stage.

For candidates, the best strategy appears to be the explicit ask. No one has deployed it more effectively that South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who cut a Twitter video soon after his CNN town hall asking supporters to “chip in whatever they’d like to” to “get him on the debate stage.” He raised more than $600,000 in the next 24 hours. Buttigieg has since pledged to supporters that he will "respect your inbox" and not send fundraising emails "demanding $3 by midnight or all hell will break loose," he said Sunday night at a campaign stop in South Carolina.

Other candidates who haven’t been able to pull off that singular viral moment are continuing to making pleas for $1 support. Booker took to Twitter to ask for 2,000 more contributions this week, before he hit his 65,000-donor goal. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii put out an email with the subject line: “We’re in danger of losing our spot” — even though she’s doubly qualified for the stage.

Even former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads the primary polls and soared past 65,000 donors on his first day in the race, is still making small-dollar asks.

“Can you send $1?” Biden’s campaign wrote in a recent fundraising email.