After bringing order to Casino Industry, Frank Fahrenkopf sets sights on presidential debates

In 1995, when Frank Fahrenkopf became the first president of the American Gaming Association, he had a brutal assignment: to transform the casino gaming industry’s reputation among policymakers, which at that time was of a buccaneering business of sin. Fahrenkopf successfully recast the industry as a mainstream corporate citizen, like other entertainment industries.

Two decades later, Fahrenkopf has another monumental challenge on his hands. As co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, he will attempt to add some semblance of order and sanity to the final months of a wild presidential election cycle, one that is unprecedented in many ways.

This year, a chaotic Republican set of primaries and caucuses and an extended Democratic race ended with the formal presidential nominations of candidates who are highly unpopular even within their own political parties. Donald Trump, the Republican, has broken virtually every rule of political correctness and offended countless subgroups of society. Hillary Clinton, the Democrat, has been plagued by a never-ending email scandal, prompting calls from her opponents that she should be sitting in prison rather than running for president.

Fahrenkopf and his colleagues seek to use the upcoming presidential debates to provide some normality to the election. They’d like voters to step back, take a deep breath, and look beyond tweets and soundbites in assessing the candidates.

“Our purpose is to educate the American public on what these candidates say they are going to do and how they are going to accomplish it,” Fahrenkopf said last week in an interview en route to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “It’s really the only time we see them in an unvarnished atmosphere where they can’t get away with two-minute answers.”

Fahrenkopf is hardly a novice to the world of presidential debates. He has co-chaired the CPD since 1987, when it was created to end disorderly and ad hoc arrangements for organizing and running debates.

But the 2016 election poses a unique combination of old and new challenges, including major schisms in both the Democrat and Republican parties, anti-establishment populist sentiment on both the left and the right, an uptick of terrorism and security concerns, the popularity of new media platforms, and the possibility of third party spoiler candidates playing a major role for the first time since Ross Perot in 1992.

In such a heated environment, Fahrenkopf explains, ensuring that the candidates thoroughly articulate their positons on the issues that average Americans – not just the media – care most deeply about takes on the utmost importance.

Accordingly, the three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate – which will commence in late September – will take on new formats that will allow for more in-depth discussion of issues, more exchanges between the candidates, and greater use of social media platforms to provide public input into the questions that are asked.

One goal of the CPD is to remove the lingering sour taste of the raucous Republican primary debates of last fall and winter. It will do this by presenting the candidates in a civilized and dignified manner, as opposed to the cage match approaches employed by television networks to drive publicity and ratings.

While those primary debates may have made for entertaining reality television, they fell short in providing opportunities for the public to learn about the candidates and where they stood on key issues. Instead, the “debates” featured bizarre storylines such as Trump’s protracted feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, name-calling and deeply personal attacks, and candidates ganging up on each another, plus Survivor-esque undercard (“junior varsity”) debates featuring a stage full of candidates who barely registered in the polls and had no chance of winning.

Fahrenkopf did not mince words in his criticism of the networks’ handling of the events, saying that they were conducted more like “circuses” than debates. “They weren’t really debates. When you have 17 people, that’s not a debate,” he said. “What the American people observed in the primary debates is not what they are going to see in our debates. Our debates are 90 minutes – no breaks, no commercials, the audience is warned not to clap or participate in any way.”

Because of the excitement surrounding this election, Fahrenkopf anticipates more than 100 million Americans will watch the debates this fall on television or online, a significant jump from the roughly 90 million that have watched in previous cycles.
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By controlling who – other than the two major party candidates – is invited to participate in the presidential debates, and thus who does or doesn’t receive the national exposure that comes with participation, Fahrenkopf and the CPD potentially exert tremendous influence over an election. This is especially true in a year such as 2016 where both major party candidates are not well-liked but are close in the polls. “Protest votes” for a candidate not named Trump or Clinton could ultimately tip the balance in the Electoral College.

With this power comes an ever-present tension between facilitating pluralism by allowing the exchange of different viewpoints versus using the limited debate time to present only candidates who have a realistic chance of winning.

This tension has been a perpetual thorn in the side for Fahrenkopf and the commission. Under the CPD rules, a candidate must meet the constitutional requirements for the presidency, be on the ballot in enough states, and – most importantly – hold an average of 15 percent among major polls the week prior to the debate.

Critics have long demonized this 15 percent rule – and the CPD more broadly – as a tool of the political establishment and big business. Its rationale, they say, is to squelch upstart independent and third-party candidates trying to challenge the status quo.

“For decades, corporations have used debate sponsorships as a way to skirt the clear purpose of campaign finance laws—and to influence presidential campaigns,” wrote Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, campaign finance reform activist and short-lived presidential hopeful, in a 2016 May op-ed in the Daily Beast. “That evasion will happen again this year, as corporations work with the debate commission to effectively assure that any independent presidential candidate will be shut out.”

Many critics argue that because a presidential candidate needs only five percent of the popular vote to secure federal financing for the next election cycle, the debate commission should lower its threshold to match.

Fahrenkopf pushes back against such critiques by pointing out that the 15 percent rule was not simply pulled out of thin air by party apparatchiks. It has historical precedent – it was the standard employed by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, who administered presidential debates in the 1980s prior to the CPD’s inception.

Further, he notes that legal challenges to the selection criteria have all been unsuccessful. “We’ve been sued almost every election cycle by people who think they ought to be in the debates,” he said in reference to the 15 percent threshold. “The courts have always found this to be a reasonable rule.”

Fahrenkopf also contends that because the purpose of the debates is to educate the public rather than serve as a campaign platform, little benefit would be derived by including candidates who have no realistic chance of winning the presidency.

Also, because candidates are under no obligation to participate, the CPD’s priority must be to create events that the major candidates will voluntarily agree to take part in. Being forced to share the stage with no-names is hardly conducive to that goal.

“Do you really think that Secretary Clinton and Trump are going to stand up there and debate someone you’ve never heard of who doesn’t even have a campaign?”

In previous presidential elections, skipping a debate would have been considered anathema, if not outright suicidal, for a candidate. But in 2016, as Trump demonstrated in January by shunning a Fox News debate, boycotting an event can be an effective tactic.

“We want to make sure we hold the fire to those candidates to get them to the debates, because there’s no way you can force a candidate to debate”, Fahrenkopf said.

It’s possible that 2016 will be the first time since 1992 that a third party candidate takes center stage with the big kids. The campaigns of Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party have generated significant interest among voters who are unhappy with both Trump and Hillary.

Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is among those who claim the debate game is rigged and himself sued the CPD in 2012. His chances are better this year. He has gained some traction and television coverage recently, especially after Trump became the formal party nominee at the Republican convention last month – thereby forcing the Never Trump Republicans who had clung to the faint hope of ousting Trump in a floor fight to consider other options.

With just under seven weeks remaining to qualify for the first debate on September 26, Johnson is within striking distance of 15 percent. His polling average hovered between seven and eight percent over the summer, according to a composite produced by RealClearPolitics, but he has reached as high as 12 and 13 percent in recent polls as his overall media exposure increases.

“[Johnson and Stein] have got a good shot at this point in time. They have a long way to go, but they’ve got plenty of time to get their name out there,” said Fahrenkopf, brushing aside any conspiracy theories. “But the proof is in the pudding. If they get to 15 percent, we’ll gladly invite them to participate.”

Asked about why he has continued to work with the CDP even after retiring from politics and gaming, Fahrenkopf hearkened back to a covenant he make with former Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Kirk.

“When we created the commission, we shook hands and we said that whenever we did work on the commission, I would never wear an RNC hat, and he would never wear a DNC hat. We said we would always wear USA hats,” he explained, emphasizing that he is proud of the transparency and integrity with which the commission has operated for the past three decades.

“At this point in my life, the commission is a way to give back to the country for everything my country has given me,” he said. “I take it very, very seriously.”