Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) will actually be at Thursday's
Democratic debate after all — sort of.Booker is set to run his 2020 campaign's first television ad during the sixth Democratic debate after not qualifying for the stage, The Hill reports. In the ad posted on
YouTube, Booker says he "won't be on tonight's debate stage, but that's okay, because I'm gonna win this
election anyway."He also jokes in the ad about whether "we can afford" the ad, noting viewers will only see it once because "I'm not a billionaire," contrasting himself with the other billionaires in the race filling the airwaves with ads like Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, the latter of whom did qualify for Thursday's debate. In an interview with
CNN Thursday, Booker said it's "unfortunate" that he won't be at the debate but that he's "confident" he'll make it to the next one in January. Booker has been calling on the Democratic National Committee to change the debate qualifications; in Thursday's case, candidates needed to reach 4 percent in four approved polls and have at least 200,000 individual donors to qualify, Vox reports. In the hours before the debate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). in an email asking for contributions to Booker's campaign wrote that "the fact that he won't be on the December debate stage tonight is a loss for our party." The ad, The Hill reports, will be running in 22 markets, including Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. The seventh Democratic debate that Booker has expressed confidence he'll make it set for Jan. 14.