Third-party candidates in multiple statewide races are criticizing their leading opponents and a Chicago area PBS station after being excluded from the only debates in their races ahead of election day.

Both Independent party gubernatorial candidate Collin Corbett, a former Republican strategist, and American Center Party U.S. Senate candidate Whitfield Harrington were excluded from their races’ only debates on Chicago-area station WTTW.

The candidates said a change in rules that would’ve made them eligible to appear became moot due to polling released, which they say was funded in-part by Democratic incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

WTTW loosened the eligibility requirements in the weeks leading up to the debates, partly because no public polling had been released to show how much support they had compared to their opponents.

Corbett was skeptical of that rule change after Chicago News Weekly shared the results of a poll for each statewide race by Public Policy Polling – which he said is Democratic party-aligned.

Corbett accused the Chicago magazine and the station hosting the debate of having coordinated with the Pritzker campaign based on the purchasing of ads in their publication on multiple occasions leading up to the poll being conducted.

The poll found he had 6% of the support among the 569 respondents to the survey.

“I was never going to make the debate stage. Even when WTTW relented and loosened a couple of their restrictions and it seemed like there might be a ray of sunshine,” Corbett said. “Somehow they magically had money to pay a national pollster to poll not just this race, but all the statewide races. It's a coincidence that J.B. Pritzker had the back page full-page ad in the last two editions of their magazine.”

The WTTW candidate forum rules for eligibility are publicly available on their website, requiring each candidate to have at least 15% public support based on polling conducted after the primary election – regardless of if they appear on the ballot or not.

The webpage also says “a candidate, campaign, political party, political action committee or any person or entity that financially supports the candidate’s campaign” can’t have commissioned the poll.

Corbett said he disagreed with being excluded from the debate based on the rules presented by the station.

“I would argue that WTTW's rules state that the poll has to be paid for by an independent outlet and done by a non-partisan or independent polling firm and neither of those two things happened,” Corbett said.

A news release from the Senate candidate, who wasn’t listed among the poll’s results that included 15% undecided, similarly referred to Pritzker’s advertising with the magazine to claim that the polling wasn’t commissioned independently.

The debate between the candidates to replace U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Democrat Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton and Republican Don Tracy, is scheduled to air on WTTW at 8 p.m. Tuesday and will be simulcast on Blue Room Stream.