Fox announces debate participants: 5 of 10 from Florida
GOP DEBATE DETAILS
9-11 p.m. (ET) Thursday: Top 10 candidates in national polls, as determined by Fox News. Moderated by Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
5-6 p.m. (ET) Thursday: Remaining candidates. Moderated by Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum.
Where: Both aired on FOX NEWS from Cleveland.
WHO MADE THE CUT
In order of polling
Donald Trump, part-time Palm Beach resident
Jeb Bush, former Florida governor
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Mike Huckabee, of Santa Rosa Beach
Ben Carson, of West Palm Beach
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Ohio Gov. John Kasich
LIVE COVERAGE
Follow Post reporter George Bennett, @gbennettpost, as he tweets from Cleveland Wednesday and Thursday, and join The Post's live coverage Thursday night at palmbeachpost.com/gopdebate.
Four Floridians — or five, if you count part-time Palm Beacher Donald Trump — will take the Republican presidential debate stage in Cleveland Thursday night in an historic deluge of same-state candidates.
Fox News announced the 10 debate participants selected from the crowded GOP field of 17 candidates at 6 p.m. Tuesday based on average polling results from five recent national polls. The seven Republican White House aspirants who didn't make the cut will participate in a sort of consolation-round debate earlier Thursday.
The undisputed polling leader was Trump, a resident of New York who also is a fixture in Palm Beach, where his Mar-a-Lago Club has hosted the last three Palm Beach County GOP Lincoln Day dinners.
In addition to Trump, Fox’s polls put four Florida residents in the top 10: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, of West Palm Beach, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who since 2010 has lived in Santa Rosa Beach in the Florida Panhandle.
Also making the cut for the prime-time 9 p.m. debate were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The five Floridians polled among the top seven. Interrupting the Florida chain were Walker, polling third, and Cruz, polling sixth.
Appearing at a 5 p.m. debate on Fox will be former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham; former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore
According to Fox, the five polls included in the average that determined the main line-up were conducted by Bloomberg, CBS News, Fox News, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University.
The proliferation of Sunshine State candidates is unprecedented, says Eric Ostermeier, a University of Minnesota professor and blogger who is an expert in historical primary data.
“There has never been four (same-party presidential contestants) from a particular state in my research…We really haven’t seen this in the modern political era,” said Ostermeier.
The closest thing Ostermeier could find was New York, which was home to three Republican presidential contestants in 1916 and again in 1940 in the days when nominees were selected mainly by party bosses and convention delegates rather than primary voters.
New Yorkers seeking the Republican nomination in 1916 were former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was returning to the GOP after running as a third-party candidate in 1912; former Sen. Elihu Root; and Charles Evans Hughes, a former governor of the Empire State who was a sitting Supreme Court justice at the time. Hughes won the nomination, but failed to unseat Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson in the general election.
In 1940, New Yorker Wendell Willkie won the Republican nomination and New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey was a leading contender. A third New York resident, media mogul Frank Gannett, also briefly sought the GOP nomination that year.
Florida’s flood of Republican candidates comes after a lengthy drought of serious Florida presidential contenders from either party.
No Floridian has ever been president or the nominee of a major party — or even come close. Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham was the last Sunshine State resident to try. He opened a 2004 presidential campaign but scrubbed it in October 2003 before any caucus or primary votes were cast. In 1984, former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew sought the Democratic nomination but dropped out after a last-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.
