Thought this week’s political news was over? Think again. Just one day after the House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump, seven Democrats will square off tonight in the sixth Democratic Presidential primary debate — the last of 2019.
The debate will be co-hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico and air live from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles at 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on PBS. There were concerns earlier in the week that it would be cancelled after every candidate who qualified for the debate threatened to boycott it due to a labor dispute, but an agreement was reached on Tuesday.
This debate will be the smallest so far. Only seven candidates qualified: former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, billionaire executive Tom Steyer, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
It’ll also be the whitest debate so far. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang will the only person of color on stage. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — all people of color — each hit the required donor threshold but not the polling requirements. California Sen. Kamala Harris has also dropped out the race since last debate, after struggled with poor polling and fundraising numbers.
“You still have a fair number of senators on the stage who could very easily be in the middle of a trial of the President when they would otherwise be campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire in January,” says Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. “So just some discussion about what they plan to do about that, or what people need to know going into that might be useful.”
Why the debate was almost cancelled
On Friday, all seven Democrats who qualified for the December debate announced they planned to boycott it in support of Unite Here Local 11, a food workers’ union, that was in a labor dispute with Sodexo, the company contracted to operate dining halls at the Loyola Marymount campus.
Warren was the first announce her decision to “not cross the union’s picket line,” and the others swiftly followed.
The Los Angeles Times reports Warren’s move surprised some of the union members. “It was astonishing to me,” Angela Fisher, a Sodexo prep cook at the university, told the Los Angeles Times. “I feel like we’re little people and they’re big people.”
The possibility of the debate’s cancelation threw the DNC into a tailspin. Axios reports that DNC chair Tom Perez, who also served as Secretary of Labor under President Obama, spent over 20 hours on the phone attempting to resolve the dispute.
On Tuesday, Unite Here Local 11 announced they had reached an agreement with Sodexo. The debate could move forward as planned.
0 Comments