CNN has announced it will host a debate on January 10 in Des Moines for GOP presidential candidates who have at least 10% support in three polls. One of the polls must be of likely Iowa Caucus-goers.
Three of the candidates who debated last night in Alabama are heading to Iowa to campaign. Nikki Haley, who’ll speak at a town hall style meeting in Sioux City this evening, said last night’s debate “a scrum.”
“There was no question that the fellas came out with attacks on me and I appreciated it,” Haley said during an interview today on KSCJ Radio. “…I mean we are surging. They know it. They see it in the polls.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy criticized Haley for accepting campaign donations from Wall Street donors, including a Democrat who founded LinkedIn. Haley said, during the debate, that they’re “just jealous” of her new donors.
Voters are most concerned about how candidates will fix the economy, according to Haley. “We have got to get congress to where they stop all this reckless spending,” Haley said. “We saw it happen with Trump with $9 trillion in four years. Now you’ve got Republicans and Democrats spending like drunken sailors and so I’ll stop the spending, stop the borrowing. We’ll eliminate the earmarks and I’ll veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels.”
Haley, DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Texas pastor Ryan Binkley are scheduled to be in Sioux Center Saturday for an event Congressman Randy Feenstra is hosting.
CNN plans to host its January 10 debate at Drake University. The network announced its polling threshold is for “surveys that began no earlier than October 15, and (are) released no later than 12:05 p.m. ET on January 2.”
DeSantis, who has been calling for a debate in Iowa, posted a message on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning, saying: “Looking forward to debating in Iowa!”
The Iowa Caucuses are scheduled for January 15.