Texas State University to host first presidential debate in state ahead of 2024 election

Texas State University will host the first 2024 U.S. presidential debate in September, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday morning. This is the first time a presidential debate will be hosted in the Lone Star State.

The Sept. 16 debate will be the first of four ahead of the November 2024 presidential election.

Texas State is the only Texas university to have graduated a U.S. president. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson gradated in 1930 with a degree in history and a teaching certificate.

Texas State has nearly 39,000 students, about 43% of whom are first generation students. The university is poised to become a Research 1 Carnegie level university by 2027 after Texas voters earlier this month approved Proposition 5 — a new research fund for four state universities, including Texas State.

Kelly Damphousse, who became Texas State's president in July 2022, said that hosting a presidential debate was a goal of his from his first week on the job. He said he believes Texas State was chosen due to its legacy with Lyndon Johnson and its facilities.

“Texas State looks a lot like the state of Texas demographically. We are almost all Texas students here, more than 95%,” he said. “And so I think in many ways we look like a great opportunity for them. Not just our facilities, not just our campus, but just the entire story must have looked attractive to them.”

The debate will be held in the Strand Arena, the school's events center. Hundreds of media outlets and attendees are expected to come.

Damphousse said the university is dedicating $5 million to prepare for and run the debate, including updating infrastructure, facilities, Wi-Fi and electrical feeds around the arena. The university will call on private donors to help fund these improvements, he said.

He said the presidential debate is expected to cause a “huge economic spike” for San Marcos.

“It really is a partnership with the city of San Marcos and the university,” Damphousse said. “But we also know that this is a unique opportunity for us, and we want to make sure that not just our campus, but our city, the Hill Country of Texas, the entire state of Texas is represented well by this opportunity.”

Eric Algoe, executive vice president for operations and chief financial officer at Texas State, said the debate host application process involved hundreds of pages.

“It’s akin to the Super Bowl,” Algoe said.

Damphousse said the university hopes to involve all students, though not all students will be able to attend the debate. He said there will be other events in the weeks leading up to it for students to take part in.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is the nonprofit, nonpartisan group that produces all presidential debates. It has existed since 1987 solely to organize the debates.

Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair and co-founder of the commission, said Texas State was chosen after it submitted a bid to host. Each year the commission tries to pick a school from the East, West, Midwest and South, he said, after the Secret Service and the commission’s team of experts evaluate the sites.

“We send out requests to most of the colleges and universities in the country who would be interested in hosting the debates and we get in (bids),” Fahrenkopf said. “The folks that came back from (Texas State) were really delighted with the campus, the people at the campus we're going to work on the project, the facilities, etc., and so it was one that made the final cut.”

Fahrenkopf said this will provide a great opportunity for Texas State to gain more prominence.

“It puts their school on the map a little bit more nationally and internationally,” he said. “And plus, it's a marvelous opportunity for the students who participate and see what's happening right on campus with the presidential candidates.”

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, debates were held with limited audiences, so this will be the first after the pandemic with a full house. Typically, about a third of the tickets will be split between the hosting school and the commission, Fahrenkopf said. Students also tend to get involved by working the event, he said.

The other debates will be held Oct. 1 at Virginia State University and Oct. 9 at the University of Utah. Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., will hold the vice presidential debate Sept. 25. Three of the universities are hosting for the first time this year, Fahrenkopf said.

The 2020 debates were held at universities in Ohio, Miami and Nashville, Tenn.

Jon Taylor, a University of Texas at San Antonio political science professor and chair of that department, said that “it makes perfect sense” for Texas to host one of the debates.

“We're at the forefront of American politics," Taylor said. "We have tremendous influence on the way that politics works in this country and governance works in this country, be it on issues such as immigration or abortion."

Texas will vote in the presidential primary to help decide each party's nominee on Super Tuesday, March 5. Incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are both running for their party’s nomination and are the current front-runners.

Other presidential candidates can qualify for the debate if they have at least 15% support in national polls. Fahrenkopf said the last third-party candidate to qualify was Ross Perot from Texas in 1992. This year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer who is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, is running as an independent candidate.

With a year left before U.S. voters pick their next president, it remains to be seen who will win each party's nomination and who will make the debate stage.

“We don't yet know whether President Biden will agree to debate, or if Donald Trump would participate to debate or whoever may replace them,” Fahrenkopf said. “The president's numbers don't look good. And Trump is not the most popular guy that’s ever lived. We don't what's going to happen. So we’ll just wait and see.”

Additional reporting by staff writer Hogan Gore.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas State University to host first 2024 presidential debate