for. she wants to fight corruption and money in politics. this is exactly the kind of campaign that she wants to run. and her campaign actually tells us she has not held a single fundraiser since new year s eve. had when she launched her exploratory campaign. think about that for a second there are idea that a candidate who has been running essentially for president for almost two months now has spent no time on fundraisers. this is very unusual and i think we are going to see this as sort of an implicit challenge and almost a criticism anybody else in the field who s going to be asking for money from wealthy donors because she is making it clear this is not the model that they she thinks should work for the democratic party and the candidates. just to be clear, so she s doing away with big fundraisers, but what if a big check comes in the mail? is she still accepting big-ticket checks from wealthy people just not doing the fundraisers or, no, she only wants grassroots fundraising?
grow? that s right. i think that what is happening right now is we could have up to 20 candidates in the race but we want to make sure we re providing a level playing field so that every candidate and their supporters feel like they got a fair shot. you know, we believe that starting the process in june, having 12 debates, 6 in 2019 and 6 in 2020 will be ample time and discussion to talk about the issues. we want these debates to focus on policy issues. we don t want them to focus on hand size like the republican debates did last time around. what s interesting about our announcement is we aren t just focusing on polling for the first two. we re focusing on grassroots fundraising which hasn t been seen before. sandra: final thoughts on this poll. at least we ll look at this. dem chances in 2020.
wouldn t commit to what exactly would qualify candidates for inclusion, he mentioned factors like polling and grassroots fundraising. perez said, quote, we will likely have a large field of candidates. we expect that large field. we welcome that large field. okay. but they re going to have as many as 30 contenders, and unless it s staged on an aircraft carrier and runs five hours long, that will be a battle of sound bites, not substance. in politico, jeff greenfield, the five-time emmy award winning political journalist and historian offered his own prescription. his debate idea, don t hold any. his explanation, quote, no matter how the field is divided, the prospect of any meaningful exchange of ideas among even seven or eight participants is nonexistent. i totally agree with that observation but my solution differs from greenfield s. i have two suggestions actually. number one, if there really are
last round on the republican side, the undercard. you say candidates will qualify by meeting criteria that require polling and other measures that reflect support such as grassroots fundraising which i think is interesting. tell me how about where the cut-off is for who can debate. if you want to apply for a campaign under the law that congress passed over a couple of decades ago, you have to show that you have a grassroots fundraising capacity. i believe under our current campaign finance laws you raise a certain amount of money in 20 states and increments of i think under the current law it is $250 or less, that shows that you ve built an operation nationwide. and so we re looking at that as a framework for trying to make sure that we re not simply looking at polls that all too frequently just measure name i.d. exact live, but we re looking
make it to the mountain top, i want to make sure all of those candidates and their followers feel like their candidate got a fair shake and that is why we ve put in place this very transparent process that will give them that fair shake and give voters an opportunity to hear from candidates what, they stand for and what they are fighting for. you said this, and i thought it was interesting, you won t use polling to segment. that is a big thing that happened in that last in the last round on the republican side, the undercard. you say candidates will qualify by meeting criteria that require polling and other measures that reflect support such as grassroots fundraising which i think is interesting. tell me how about where the cut-off is for who can debate. if you want to apply for a campaign under the law that congress passed over a couple of decades ago, you have to show that you have a grassroots fundraising capacity. i believe under our current campaign finance laws you raise a