by Shelby Talcott
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has reached both qualifications to compete in September’s Democratic debate, her campaign announced Friday.
Klobuchar is the eighth candidate to have met the polling and donor qualifications for the third debate. Candidates must poll at least 2% support in four different surveys.
“Now onward and upward,” the announcement email read, according to NBC News. The announcement means that Klobuchar has received at least 130,000 individual donors.
We did it! We made the fall debates! My approach on the stage was to take it to Donald Trump and not each other. The result? Small donations poured in & now more than 130,000 people have contributed to our grassroots campaign.Thanks & let’s keep it going: https://t.co/iVg91M9DTq
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) August 2, 2019
“Amy’s debate performances have shown exactly why she is the strongest candidate to take on [President] Donald Trump and she will continue to hold him accountable for his divisiveness and empty promises,” Justin Buoen, Klobuchar’s campaign manager, said in a statement, according to the Star Tribune.
Klobuchar said that Democrats “gotta use these debates as a moment to take it to Donald Trump” in an interview on MSNBC Thursday after using that strategy for the Democratic debate Wednesday.
“If you spend the whole time just cutting down your opponent just to get that viral moment, then what have we done? We don’t win and we don’t do better for this country,” Klobuchar said Thursday on MSNBC, according to NBC News.
The Minnesota senator joins former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the third Democratic debate.
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang tweeted Monday that he had qualified for the third debate as well. However, the Democratic National Committee denied one of the polls Yang used to qualify for the debate stage. Yang’s campaign manager alleged that the odds were being stacked against them.
“The political establishment is stacking the deck against us,” Zach Graumann, Yang’s campaign manager, wrote in an email.
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Shelby Talcott is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photos by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
