Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore was left off the invite list for the next Republican presidential debate, scheduled for Sept. 16 and to be broadcast on CNN.
Gilmore, who served as governor from 1998-2002, is the only candidate among the 17 declared to be left out.
As with the first debate of the season, hosted last week by Fox News, CNN will break up the candidate pool into two groups, with 10 on the stage for the prime-time debate, the rest relegated to the dinner hour.
To qualify for the dinner hour gathering, candidates have to average at least 1 percent in national polls being used by CNN to gauge public opinion.
The polls being used to determine the field include ABC/The Washington Post, Bloomberg, CBS/The Wall Street Journal, Pew, Quinnipiac University, Gallup, USA Today and Time, among others.
Which means Gilmore still has time to work his way into the debate, and it wouldn’t seem that hard to reach the 1 percent threshold, right?
Gilmore, whose most recent political campaign was his 2008 landslide loss to Democrat Mark Warner for a Virginia U.S. Senate seat, was also left out of the Fox News debates.
Edit: Gilmore was in the dinner hour debate sponsored by Fox News.
– Story by Chris Graham