Republican presidential candidates will gather for the first debate of the 2024 primary Wednesday, but who exactly will be on the stage is still a question.
While candidates have been campaigning for months in early contest states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Milwaukee debate will mark the first time most of the top-tier candidates share a stage. The setting is notable, as Milwaukee will also host the Republican National Convention next summer.
To qualify for the debate, the Republican National Committee requires candidates to have received 40,000 individual donations, including 200 from at least 20 different states. Candidates must also register at 1% or higher in several national and early primary state polls.
Finally, candidates must sign a “loyalty pledge” saying they’ll commit to supporting the eventual nominee. Most candidates have agreed to the pledge, but there are some holdouts — including former President Donald Trump.
Here are the candidates who have qualified for the Wednesday debate in Milwaukee.
Qualified
Ron DeSantis
Polls have consistently shown the Florida governor in a distant second place behind Trump. However, DeSantis has so far failed to catch fire, with one recent poll showing a fall to third place behind former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in New Hampshire.
DeSantis’s team — and, perhaps more importantly, his donors — see the debate as a potential springboard for a campaign that has struggled for months. The New York Times reported Thursday that the main super-PAC backing DeSantis wants him to spend much of the debate defending Trump from any attacks launched by other candidates, such as Christie.
Vivek Ramaswamy
The 38-year-old entrepreneur has crept up on DeSantis in the polls. He’s done this in part by being an outspoken defender of Trump despite the former president’s legal issues. Ramaswamy has pitched a number of extreme policies as part of his platform, including shutting down the FBI and bombing drug cartels in Mexico, an idea DeSantis has shown interest in as well.
As part of his fundraising effort, Ramaswamy rolled out a plan earlier this summer in which anyone who solicited donations for him could keep 10% of what they raised.
Nikki Haley
The former South Carolina governor and only woman in the field has been barnstorming early states but remains mired in the single digits in most polls.
In an interview with Politico published Thursday, Haley dismissed the idea that she was really running to be selected as vice president, saying “I don’t run for second.” Haley previously served as the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Tim Scott
Another South Carolinian, the U.S. senator is the most prominent Black candidate in the race and has been a successful fundraiser.
While the latest round of national polling shows Scott consistently around 3%, he did spike up to 9% in a New York Times/Siena poll of Iowa earlier this month, putting him in third behind Trump and DeSantis. His campaign announced Thursday it was making an $8 million ad buy, following up a $6 million buy earlier this year.
Doug Burgum
The billionaire governor of North Dakota took an unorthodox approach to courting donors in order to reach the required number, offering $20 gift cards to anyone who donated $1 to his campaign.
Burgum’s campaign announced he’d qualified for the debate last month, although questions remain about the legality of the fundraising solicitation.
Chris Christie
Christie said that while he had qualified for the stage, the RNC was still verifying the donor information and said last Sunday that he was yet to be presented with the loyalty pledge to sign.
The first governor to back Trump during his 2016 run, Christie has become one of Trump’s top critics within the party. The two have traded barbs for most of the summer, most recently with Trump calling Christie a “stone-cold loser” and Christie responding by calling the former president a “coward.”
Mike Pence
The former vice president’s campaign announced he had hit the donor threshold to qualify earlier this month. Pence has been openly critical of his former boss, responding to the most recent indictment by saying the 2020 election was not stolen and there was no election fraud in the battleground states, as Trump and his allies have baselessly claimed.
Despite the name recognition, Pence has languished in polling, hovering in the low-to-mid single digits.
Qualified, according to their campaigns
Asa Hutchinson
The former Arkansas governor said Sunday that he had qualified for the debate. A Trump critic and former federal prosecutor, Hutchinson has so far failed to gain traction among Republican voters.
Perry Johnson
A conservative businessman from Michigan, Johnson said Friday that he had qualified for the debate.
Francis Suarez
Suarez — the mayor of Miami — says that he has qualified for the debate, although the Republican National Committee has not yet confirmed that he has met their polling and donor thresholds.
Qualified, but attendance unlikely
Donald Trump
The four separate indictments so far this year have not put a dent in the former president’s standing as the runaway frontrunner for the nomination. National polls from Fox News, Quinnipiac and Economist/YouGov last week all found Trump with more than 50 percent of the vote, up nearly 40 points on his closest competitors.
Despite prodding from the Republican National Committee, Trump has shown little interest in attending the debate, although aides had floated the idea of him showing up at the last minute. However, the New York Times reported Friday that he would skip the debate and instead release an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Trump has maintained there’s little point in debating his rivals for the nomination, given his imposing lead over the rest of the field. “Nobody even has a chance,” he said at a fundraising event earlier this month in Alabama. “We’ve already defeated the Republicans.”
