AMY GOODMAN: Today in Washington, the Commission on Presidential Debates will hold a briefing to explain the criteria it’s using to determine which presidential candidates get to participate in a series of upcoming debates. Of course, President Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole will be invited, and probably Reform Party candidate H. Ross Perot. But what about other third-party hopefuls, like Green Party nominee Ralph Nader or Libertarian candidate Harry Browne?

Well, yesterday afternoon, I got a chance to speak to Janet Brown, who’s the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates. And I began by asking her: What are the criteria for a candidate to participate in the debates?

JANET BROWN: There are a set of criteria, Amy, that fill three broad categories. One of them is constitutional eligibility, of course, and ballot access on a sufficient number of state ballots to have an arithmetic chance of winning the Electoral College. The second is evidence of grassroots and financial support behind a candidate. And the third is evidence of national support of that candidate as measured by opinion poll data and other indices that we look at.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is going to determine which candidates meet which of these requirements?

JANET BROWN: There’s a five-person advisory board that is totally independent from the commission. The members of that committee will meet and look at information that we have compiled in each category on anyone who has filed as a candidate for president or vice president with the Federal Election Commission. Those people will make a determination and then submit their recommendation to the commission’s board of directors, which will either accept or not accept it.

AMY GOODMAN: What about in a case like Ralph Nader, who, when they do the calculations, the Green Party, they say in a four-way race, he could well have the electoral votes necessary to win?

JANET BROWN: Well, we look at everyone, as I said, who is a candidate, so that is one of the factors that they’ll be looking at.

AMY GOODMAN: One of my questions was about the nature of the commission. I know that it says in all of the literature on the Commission on Presidential Debates that it’s a nonpartisan group, but the heads of it are the heads — former heads of the DNC, Democratic National Committee, Paul Kirk, and the former head of the Republican National Committee, Frank Fahrenkopf. So, really, it’s a bipartisan commission of Republican and Democrats, which it seemed to me to lead to a bias against third-party candidates.

JANET BROWN: Well, as you know, we included Mr. Perot in 1992, and it strikes me that that, in fact, is support for the fact that this independent committee does have the independence that it takes to take a look at all of these candidates to make a considered recommendation to the board, and then the board acts on that. Mr. Kirk and Mr. Fahrenkopf may be former heads of the party, but they were not elected ex officio. We have no relationship with the parties of any kind. And I think we have, between our board, our advisory board, and the independent advisory committee, a very good series of checks and balances on any kind of skewed action.

AMY GOODMAN: Perot was included in the debates in 1992, but he also is a multibillionaire. You take someone like Ralph Nader, and I noticed that one of your criterion was financial support. Well, he doesn’t want to take money for this campaign. He feels that it should be run just by volunteers getting out there and that that creates a different equation, because let’s say he’s on 25 states, but that’s volunteers in those states who got him on the ballots as opposed to all the big money that goes into the other campaigns.

JANET BROWN: And that’s precisely why we look at grassroots support. No one of these factors, Amy, is determinant if there is — it’s not a checklist where you have to pass seven out of 11 categories, and if you don’t pass any one particular one, then you are not included. There is this misconception that if you have not qualified for federal matching funds, that you are not included. That is not the case. These criteria are meant to try to establish a fair portrait of somebody that’s come forward as a serious candidate by any means whatsoever. You may remember that a bright line threshold of 15% support in the polls was used in 1980 to determine that Congressman Anderson, running as an independent, would be included in the debates. That threshold was criticized by a lot of people, including one of the pollsters whose data were used, Peter Hart. In response to that criticism, when we were started in 1987, we went back to the Civil War and took a look at any major third-party or independent candidate that had ever run, to try to establish fair ways to establish that person’s seriousness of purpose. And one of them clearly is the level of grassroots support.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let me ask you another question along the lines of the chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates. And that is the perception that a lot of people have — I guess something like 118 million people in this country don’t vote — that there’s no one out there that represents them. And you look at the chairs of this commission, for example, Frank Fahrenkopf, who’s not only former head of the RNC, Republican National Committee, but is currently the head of — the chief lobbyist for gambling in this country. And now, in terms of money being poured into the Democratic and Republican parties, they’re one of the major contributors. I think Chuck Lewis, the Center for Public Integrity founder, just did a report on gambling, where he said this report shows how the gambling industry plays the game of political roulette. It plays both sides by laying down two big stacks of chips, talking about on the Republican, Democratic Party. And you have someone like Ralph Nader, who says that there’s something wrong with a country where the three biggest growth industries are prisons, temporary workers and casinos. Now, I would imagine Frank Fahrenkopf is not going to feel very good about him.

JANET BROWN: Mr. Fahrenkopf isn’t a member of the independent advisory committee that looks at these candidates, Amy. And I can assure you that for whatever else he does in terms of his professional undertakings, that this is a job he’s held with the commission for nine years. He takes it extraordinarily seriously. He sees his responsibility as extremely important. And he will apply that sense of responsibility to Mr. Nader or anyone else.

AMY GOODMAN: But then, what is their role? What are the roles of the chairs, if they’re not actually deciding which candidates will participate in the debates?

JANET BROWN: Their role is as chairmen of the board. And they will hear the recommendation of the independent advisory committee and ask for a vote by the board.

AMY GOODMAN: And so they have a vote on that board?

JANET BROWN: Yes, they have — each one, each director, has one vote.

AMY GOODMAN: But it seems like, I mean, there’s a clear conflict here with Fahrenkopf. I mean, he makes his money from representing — he is the representative of what he calls the American Gaming Association. He makes his fortune from the fortunes made by the gambling industry in this country.

JANET BROWN: Amy, if you want to talk to Mr. Fahrenkopf about a conflict, you can ask him.

AMY GOODMAN: But it just seems that since people are so disillusioned in this country that the candidates don’t represent them, that when you have participants in the debates chosen by people who have a serious vested interest in the outcome, that there’s going to be a lot of skepticism out there.

JANET BROWN: Yet I’d invite you to ask him to comment on it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you another question then. Looking at your criteria, one of them is newsworthiness. It says you take a poll of Washington news bureau chiefs to see which candidate they think has a good chance of winning or is newsworthy. Is that right?

JANET BROWN: Washington bureau chiefs are among a very broad range of people that follow the elections whose opinion we ask for in terms of seeing whether they think a given candidate has a serious national level of support. It is designed precisely for the reason you just raised yourself a couple of minutes ago. These are people that follow the campaigns on a 50-state basis. They do become aware of the number of individuals that are out there working on a given candidate’s behalf. They’re in a position to give information that we find helpful. None of it is in the form of one factor that would tell the committee what to do, but it is one of the factors that we’re looking at. But it’s helpful to see whether they think these are people that have broad, national, active support.

AMY GOODMAN: Because it seems that the corporate media, the mainstream media in this country, has a serious bias against third parties, unless you’re talking about someone like Ross Perot, who is a multibillionaire and can, you know, pay the networks for his infomercials. But just yesterday, I was watching This Week with David Brinkley. They were laughing about any candidates other than Dole and Clinton. And you just wonder what kind of actually objective view you can get from these bureau chiefs. Just look at the coverage of third-party candidates. They really give coverage.

JANET BROWN: As I said, Amy, it’s only one of a lot of different pieces of research that we do.

AMY GOODMAN: Final question, that has to do with a column David Broder did yesterday where — in The Washington Post, where he recommended the possibility of having third-party candidates, like Ralph Nader, like Ross Perot, possibly not participate in all the three debates, but participate in one of the debates, the libertarian candidate, as well. Has that ever been done before, where they’re included in one of a few debates?

JANET BROWN: Not since we’ve been sponsoring them, and I’m not aware of any prior to that.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there any possibility that that kind of a solution would be considered?

JANET BROWN: Any solution is on the table as far as the independent committee and the board of directors is concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: And who is on that board?

JANET BROWN: The board of directors refers to the commission. There is a board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Then there is a separate independent advisory committee that makes the determination regarding third-party candidates.

AMY GOODMAN: And who are those people?

JANET BROWN: Which people?

AMY GOODMAN: The people who determine the third-party candidates, if they can —

JANET BROWN: It is a committee that is chaired by professor Richard Neustadt of Harvard University. And its members are professor Diana Carlin of the University of Kansas; Dorothy Ridings, the former president of the League of Women Voters and current president of the Council on Foundations; Kenneth Thompson, the director of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia; and Eddie Williams, who’s the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

AMY GOODMAN: And just to understand, they’re the ones who will determine which third-party candidates are included or any of the candidates included?

JANET BROWN: Third-party and independent candidates.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, what does the board do?

JANET BROWN: The board then accepts or does not accept that independent advisory committee’s recommendation.

AMY GOODMAN: And who is on the board?

JANET BROWN: The board is 10 people that include public and private sector leaders.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you give some examples?

JANET BROWN: Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, former FCC Chairman Newton Minow, Caroline Kennedy, author and attorney who lives in New York, are three of them.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the two former chairs of the DNC and RNC?

JANET BROWN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s five?

JANET BROWN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you give the other five?

JANET BROWN: Former Governor Kay Orr of Nebraska, Antonia Hernández of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund in Los Angeles, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovich of Nevada. And how many are we up to now? Senator Paul Coverdell of Georgia.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats?

JANET BROWN: Yes, it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Are there any independents on this board?

JANET BROWN: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there a reason for that, just to have Republicans and Democrats?

JANET BROWN: You’d have to ask the chairmen about that. They’re the ones that constitute the — constituted the board in the first place. There is a nominating procedure that’s followed according to the charter of the commission. There have been a variety of directors who have served and whose terms have ended, and this is the current board.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk are the ones who make up — who decide the make-up of the board.

JANET BROWN: No, they work with a nominating committee to appoint a nominating committee, which identifies new members of the board.

AMY GOODMAN: And they ultimately approve them?

JANET BROWN: They do not. There is a board vote taken.

AMY GOODMAN: Has there ever been any discussion of having some independents on the board so that there would be some sense that there — that there isn’t a bias against third parties?

JANET BROWN: Amy, the whole process is taken very seriously, as I told you. This is the same board that, in fact, decided to have the outside advisory committee that does take a look at all third-party and independent candidates. I’d be happy to discuss this further, but the fact is that I’ve run out of time on this particular interview. There is no intent by having people that have had past political involvement as either Republicans or Democrats on the board in any way to imply that that is something that’s going to govern the way they respond to third-party or independent candidates.

AMY GOODMAN: Janet Brown is executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates. If you have feelings about who should be included in those debates, the number of the commission is 202-872-1020. That’s 202-872-1020. And if you’d like to see the website of the criteria for those candidates who will be included in the debates, you can go to www.debates96.org. That’s www.debates96.org.

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