Two key Democratic party leaders are calling for more debates, lending a boost to presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley, who charged Thursday that the number of face-offs was being limited to help his rival Hillary Clinton.
Democratic National Committee vice chairs R.T. Rybak, a former Minneapolis mayor, and Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii congresswoman, pushed for more debates in a joint Facebook post Wednesday evening.
“We believe that the DNC’s decision to limit Presidential candidates to six debates, with a threat of exclusion for any candidate who participates in any non-DNC sanctioned debate, is a mistake. It limits the ability of the American people to benefit from a strong, transparent, vigorous debate between our Presidential candidates, as they make the important decision of who will be our Democratic Presidential nominee,” Gabbard and Rybak wrote.
O’Malley accused DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of “circling the wagons” for Clinton by restricting the debates.
“I’m told that this is the prerogative of the chair. There’s always an inclination, I think, for old relationships to kind of circle the wagons and protect one another, but that’s not what our party’s about,” O’Malley said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday.
O’Malley had a testy exchange about the number of debates with Wasserman Schultz last month after he finished his speech at the DNC’s summer meeting. He contended Thursday that limiting the debates to six is “political malpractice.”
“It’s bad for the country and it’s political malpractice for our party,” O’Malley told MSNBC. “It would be unprecedented for us to tell Iowa you can only have one debate before the caucuses and New Hampshire you can only have one debate and ‘Oh, by the way, it has to be on a Saturday at the peak of shopping season so that nobody can watch it.'”