Republican presidential candidate George Pataki says Sunday's private meeting of campaign representatives for most of the GOP presidential hopefuls has resulted in several key changes for future debates.
"The three things basically agreed to there will be a closing statement and an opening statement, there will be fair time, equal time, and questions to all the candidates — and that's a plus, Pataki, a former governor of New York, said Monday on
"Newsmax Prime" with J.D. Hayworth.
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"I don't care about the questions, I'm in New York, I've dealt with the New York press forever and they're as bad as you can get. All I want is the opportunity to make the case to the American people."
Pataki said the next debate — set for Nov. 10th on Fox Business Network — will "follow the old rules."
"But beyond that, it's not clear yet … A lot of the campaigns, including some of the leading campaigns, said let's break it up seven and seven randomly so that we have equal time," Pataki said.
"And if you look at where the national polling is today, there are like nine candidates between 0 and 3, all within the margin of error, and to say that somebody who's at 3 will be on a stage that gets 10 times the audience as somebody at 2 really doesn't make sense.
"It's very early in the process. The one thing every American knows is that it'll change dramatically between now and February."
The Sunday huddle of the presidential campaigns followed the protests by candidates about last week's critically-drubbed debate on CNBC — one that Dr. Ben Carson said was loaded with "gotcha" questions.
Pataki, one of the lower-polling candidates, reiterated that he is staying in the race.
"The reaction I get is extremely encouraging. People come up to me and say, governor, please stay in this race, we need somebody who can win and we think where we are right now is an aberration, it's not going to continue," Pataki said.
"At the end we need somebody who can run America, who can govern successfully, can bring us together, and who can win the election. So I mean, literally, everyday people come up and say, thank God you're in it, stay in it, we know where you are in the polls, it's all going to change, we're with you, just hang in there."
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