Presidential debate commission co-chair says picking Candy Crowley a 'mistake'

Frank Fahrenkopf, the former head of the Republican National Committee who serves as the co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, said Tuesday that the group had erred in naming CNN's Candy Crowley to moderate one of the contests.

“We made one mistake this time: Her name is Candy,” Fahrenkopf said, according to Nevada NBC anchor John Ralston.

Fahrenkopf was speaking at meeting of the conservative Keystone Group at the Las Vegas Country Club.

Crowely earned the ire of Republicans after a moment during the debate in which she challenged Mitt Romney, who had charged that President Obama had not immediately admitted that the September attack on the American compound in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Obama had spoken generally about acts of "terror" at a Rose Garden press conference the day after the attack.

“Candy Crowley had no business trying to fact-check in real time, because she was incorrect,” Romney surrogate and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu told Fox News.

Crowley later defended her conduct, saying the controversy was "a semantic thing."

"It didn't come to me as I'm going to fact check that. It came to me as let's get past this ... to me, I was really trying to move the conversation along," Crowley told "The View."

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