Former Vice President Mike Pence's campaign says it has acquired the 50,000 unique donors necessary to qualify for the second Republican National Committee primary debate taking place next month.
In an email to donors on Friday morning, campaign manager Steve DeMaura reported Pence had received enough donors to qualify for the second RNC debate, nearly two weeks after qualifying for the first debate.
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"We have qualified for the 2nd Republican Presidential debate in September," he wrote.
He noted that Pence crossed both donor thresholds in 11 weeks since announcing his candidacy. "It took other candidates-Haley (21 weeks), Ramaswamy (21 weeks), and Scott (13 weeks)- to qualify for the first debate," DeMaura said.
The Pence campaign has not yet submitted the new donors to the RNC for verification.
The second RNC primary debate is scheduled for Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California and will be broadcast by Fox Business. It will take place nearly one month after the first debate, which is set for Wednesday, Aug. 23.
Pence lagged behind other prominent candidates in crossing the 40,000 unique donor threshold necessary for the first debate. However, he encountered no issues in terms of satisfying the polling requirement, maintaining roughly 7% nationally since announcing his campaign.
His campaign revealed previously that Pence's relatively slow donor accrual was due to its predominant fundraising method, which is direct mail. Pence's team urged patience as it waited for contributions to roll in, remaining confident that the former vice president would be at the debate. His quick satisfaction of the 50,000 donor requirement following hitting the first milestone seems to indicate that the direct mail donations have begun to arrive in full force.
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This comes as the GOP front-runner, former President Donald Trump's participation in the debate next week is still unknown. The campaign has indicated that he is unlikely to attend, but Trump has yet to issue a final decision. Trump has publicly questioned why he should debate, noting that he is far ahead in the polls and pointing out that he was previously president between 2016 and 2020. He also slammed Fox News, which will broadcast the debate, taking issue with its coverage of him.
There have been reports that Trump plans not to attend the debate and will do counterprogramming instead. The Trump campaign has not confirmed this.