Republican presidential contender Sen. Rand Paul has refused to participate in Fox Business Network's second-tier debate, insisting that he's "not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we're not a first-tier campaign."
"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," Paul said on Fox News' Kilmeade and Friends radio show Wednesday, BuzzFeed News reported.
"We've got a first-tier campaign. I've got 800 precinct chairmen in Iowa. I've got 100 people on the ground working for me. I've raised $25 million. I'm not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we're not a first-tier campaign," Paul said. "If you tell a campaign with three weeks to go that they're in the second-tier, you destroy the campaign."
Fox Business Network on Tuesday announced its new methodology to determine which GOP candidates will be invited to the network's primetime debate on Jan. 14 and which will be relegated to the undercard debate. Fox will allocate podiums in the primetime debate to the top six candidates in national polls and any other candidate who places in the top five in surveys in either Iowa or New Hampshire.
The new criteria could result in as few as six candidates being invited to the main stage. Nationally, the top six Republican candidates are Donald Trump, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, according to RealClearPolitics' average of polling data. They are also in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire, or both, according to The Hill. Aside from Paul, businesswoman Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich could be left out of the next primetime debate.
Paul, who is one of the most conservative candidates in the GOP field but receives little attention, said that delegating him to the second-tier debate would further help front-runner Donald Trump, as Paul says he is the only candidate who would seriously challenge the billionaire businessman.
Paul also criticized allegedly imprecise and "artificial" polling used to determine which candidates are invited to the main stage, saying, "If we're going to make our decision based on polling, why have elections? You know? We can have American Idol contests instead."
He continued: "This isn't the job of the media to pick who wins. The voters ought to get a chance. I frankly just won't be told by the media which tier I'm in, and we're not willing to accept that, because we're a first-tier campaign, and we're in it to win it, and we won't be told that we're in a tier that can't win."
