White House hopeful and technology entrepreneur Andrew Yang has met the donor requirement to participate in the third and fourth Democrat primary debates, his campaign announced on Monday.
Yang campaign officials said the candidate received more than the needed 130,000 individual donors and 400 unique donors from 20 states, though it does not mean the longshot hopeful will face off against rivals in September, as candidates need to poll at two percent in four surveys, per the Democratic National Committee rules. According to a RealClearPolitics poll average, Yang still has some work to do with 1.1 percent.
“This campaign has continued to beat every seasoned politico’s best expectations and I couldn’t be more proud of our team. We have hit this number before sitting Senators and Governors without the backing of the establishment in Washington,” Zach Graumann, a spokesperson for the Yang campaign, said in a statement.
The announcement comes after Yang accused MSNBC of repeatedly cutting off his microphone during the first Democrat debate in Miami, Florida, last week. The candidate made the admission during a debate after-party when asked why he didn’t contribute more to the debate.
“And there were also a few times, FYI, where I just started talking, being like, ‘Hey I’d like to add something there,’ and my mic was not on,” he stated. “It’s not like if you start talking it all of a sudden takes over the convo… As I was talking nothing was happening.”
Nonethless, Yang topped the Drudge Report’s instant staw poll in the second debate on Thursday evening, garnering nearly 29 percent of the vote by the event’s end.