Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is running for the Republican presidential nomination, but you might not realize that from the debates: he’s been excluded from most of them on the grounds of low poll numbers. However, one of his constant complaints has been that there are plenty of other candidates on the stage (Jon Huntsman for instance) who are doing just about as poorly as he is. According to an email from his campaign today he’s making his most recent complaint official with the FEC and FCC.
From the email:
November 15, 2011, Santa Fe, NM — The Presidential campaign of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is filing complaints with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to protest Johnson’s exclusion from Saturday’s Republican debate in South Carolina.
Citing prohibitions against corporate contributions, the campaign’s FEC complaint makes the argument that, by arbitrarily choosing who benefited from valuable air time during the broadcast debate and excluding others, CBS was “directly and significantly supporting those candidates it favors, and advocating the nomination of one of their favorites and opposing the nomination of Complainant, whom CBS evidently disfavors.”
Similarly, in a complaint filed with the FCC, the Johnson campaign asserts that “The public owns the airways over which CBS broadcasts, and the public deserves to be free from bias- favoring some candidates over others- as well as illegal support of certain presidential candidates on national network television.”
In a statement, Johnson senior campaign advisor Ron Nielson said, “As this campaign progresses, it is clear that nationally televised debates are having a tremendous impact. Candidates are moving up and down in the polls with every debate, fundraising is impacted dramatically, and Republican voters obviously remain undecided. When one looks at the inconsistent and arbitrary criteria networks such as CBS have used to decide who gets to be on the stage for the debates, it is apparent that decisions are being made in board rooms that are having the effect of ‘preselecting’ candidates.
“That is just wrong. We owe it to our supporters and to the process to take this basic unfairness and clear bias to those agencies whose job it is to insure that the power of the airwaves is not being misused in an arbitrary manner in the Republican nominating process.”
