Seven candidates have qualified to appear onstage: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.
All seven had threatened to boycott the event over a labor dispute between union workers and a subcontractor at the venue hosting the event, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. But on Tuesday, union workers announced a tentative agreement with Sodexo, a global company that is subcontracted by the university for food service operations.
“This agreement is also an important reminder of our values as a Democratic Party,” Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said at a Tuesday news conference. “Every single Democrat running for president believes in the importance of collective bargaining.”
The debate, which starts at 8 p.m. EST, will be co-hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico. The moderators will be Judy Woodruff, Amna Nawaz and Yamiche Alcindor from PBS and Tim Alberta from Politico.
The debate will be broadcast on local PBS news channels and can be watched online at Politico.com, CNN.com and PBS.org. You can also follow the events via the live stream below, courtesy of PBS NewsHour.
The racial makeup of the debate has brought criticism of the DNC’s rules and qualifications for the election events. Yang is the only person of color to qualify for the sixth debate after California Senator Kamala Harris dropped her White House bid earlier this month.
In response to the lack of diversity on the debate stage, 2020 hopeful Cory Booker wrote a letter to the DNC urging it to alter the requirements necessary to qualify for future events. The letter was supported by all seven candidates who qualified for Thursday’s debate and former U.S. Housing Secretary Julián Castro.
“Candidates who have proven both their viability and their commitment to the Democratic Party are being prematurely cut out of the nominating contest before many voters have even tuned in—much less made their decision about whom to support,” the letter read, according to the New York Times. The Times first disclosed the letter in a report published over the weekend.
DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa pushed back against the letter in an interview with MSNBC. Hinojosa said it was “insulting” that candidates had suggested the DNC was “somehow leaving people of color” out of the debates.
Thursday’s debate will also take place after a historic vote in the House of Representatives on whether to impeach President Donald Trump. The chamber has introduced two articles against the president: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The public can expect at least four more Democratic debates in early 2020. The DNC recently announced a debate in Iowa on January 14, one in New Hampshire on February 7, another in Nevada on February 19 and a fourth in South Carolina on February 25. The committee did not say how it would determine who is able to participate or how candidates can qualify to appear.
