The Republican Party isn’t the only political establishment in shambles following the shock election of Donald Trump last fall. In a move that exacerbated the vast intra-party rift exposed during last year’s presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has stripped a number of longtime party officials of their “at-large” delegate status or leadership positions, while appointing a slate of 75 new members that include Clinton campaign veterans, lobbyists, and neophytes.
Perez revealed his picks this week, ahead of the D.N.C.’s first meeting since he was elected chairman. Upon perusing it, progressive party members were incensed to find that he had demoted a number of veteran delegates who’d backed either Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison in his bid for party chairman against Perez, or Sanders in 2016. (Ellison, who now serves as Perez’s deputy, was widely viewed as a proxy candidate for the more liberal, Sanders wing of the party.) Those ousted include Ray Buckley, James Zogby, Alice Germond, and Barbara Casbar Siperstein, NBC News reports. “I’m concerned about the optics, and I’m concerned about the impact,” Zogby said of the D.N.C. shake-up. “I want to heal the wound of 2016.”
Germond, too, noted that the move does not bode well for the party’s quest to unify its progressive and establishment wings. “It is quite unusual for a former party officer who has been serving on the D.N.C. for forever to just be left out in the cold without even a call from the chairman," she told NBC News. “So I assumed it had something to do with [my] support for Keith. . . . I understand that I fought very hard for Keith Ellison. And I understand that to the winners go the spoils.” In a statement to NBC News, Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesperson for Ellison, said, “Keith suggested names for D.N.C. at-large membership and committees. Some were selected and some were not. In the end, the selections are the prerogative of the chair.”
To add insult to injury, Perez also tapped several individuals who have lobbying or corporate-interest backgrounds—a move that has sparked criticism in the past. The pack of new delegates includes Joanne Dowdell, a registered lobbyist for Fox News parent company News Corp; Harold Ickes, a veteran of the Clinton White House; and Manuel Ortiz, a lobbyist for CITGO Petroleum Corp and Puerto Rican interests. At least 10 additional Perez-tapped superdelegates have previously been registered as lobbyists, Bloomberg reports.
D.N.C. spokesman Michael Tyler defended the chairman’s appointments. “This year's slate of at-large DNC member nominees reflects the unprecedented diversity of our party’s coalition,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “This slate doubles millennial and Native American at-large representation, provides unprecedented representation for our allies in the labor community, and increases the presence of Puerto Rican at-large members at a time when the Trump administration refuses to take responsibility for the millions of Americans who are still suffering through a major humanitarian crisis.”
