ATLANTA: Former Labour Secretary Thomas E. Perez was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, narrowly defeating Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota to take the helm of a still-divided party stunned by President Donald Trump’s victory but hopeful that it can ride the backlash against his presidency to revival.
The balloting, which carried a measure of suspense not seen in the party in decades, revealed that Democrats have yet to heal the wounds from last year’s presidential primary campaign. Perez, buoyed by activists most loyal to former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, won with 235 votes out of 435 cast on the second ballot.
Ellison, who was lifted primarily by the liberal enthusiasts of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, captured the remaining 200 votes. But that was only after he had pushed the voting to a second round after Perez fell a single vote short of winning on the first ballot.
After Perez’s victory was announced, Ellison’s supporters exploded in anger and drowned out the interim chairwoman, Donna Brazile, with a chant of “Party for the people, not big money!” When Perez was able to speak, he immediately called for Ellison to be named deputy chairman, delighting Ellison’s supporters.
Taking the microphone from Perez, Ellison pleaded with his fervent backers: “We don’t have the luxury to walk out of this room divided.”
In his victory speech, Perez played down what he called “the robust discussions in the Democratic Party.” “We’re all going to continue to be united in our values,” he said, calling the party’s “big tent” an asset.
Perez, 55, the son of Dominican immigrants, is the first Latino chairman of the Democratic Party. He was reared in Buffalo, New York, and has held a series of state and federal government jobs, most recently as Obama’s labour secretary.
Despite his limited experience in electoral politics, his calls for rebuilding the grass roots and fostering a party that “makes house calls again” appealed to the party insiders who have watched as the House, the Senate and finally the presidency slipped away.
Addressing reporters with Ellison after the election, Perez vowed to shift the committee from its overriding focus on presidential politics.
“We’re no longer simply the committee that helps elect the president; we’re the committee that helps to ensure we’re electing people up and down the Democratic ticket,” he said, switching to Spanish for a time.
Neither of the two, by this point wearing each other’s campaign buttons, laid out Ellison’s role at the party, but they intimated that they had discussed joining forces before the vote. Directly appealing to his disappointed supporters, Ellison said, “If they trust me, they need to come on and trust Tom Perez as well.”
Ellison, who said he would not quit his House seat for the deputy chairman position, added, “The very fate of our nation, I believe, is in the balance right now.”
Trump used a lighter tone in offering up his response to the Democratic National Committee’s election. “Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!”
Perez’s victory was the culmination of a more than three-month campaign that began when Democrats were still shell-shocked over losing the presidential race. All of the major candidates argued against any turn toward moderation, and they shared the same strategic vision for reviving a national committee and state parties that had withered under Obama.
What was expected to be a robust debate over the way forward for a party shut out of power across much of the country was soon diminished by the larger, more immediate matter of Trump’s almost daily provocations and the raging backlash to his hard-line agenda.
Entering the race immediately after Trump’s win, Ellison, a prominent surrogate for Sanders in the presidential primary race, quickly won support from him and other leading liberals. Allies of Obama, Clinton and other establishment-aligned Democrats soon began casting about for an alternative. In December, Perez entered the fray, quickly winning praise from Obama and endorsements from a number of governors.
The attention of Democrats will now turn to a handful of special congressional elections and a pair of promising governor’s races this November in New Jersey and Virginia. But the most significant task ahead for Perez will come in 2018, when Democrats face a daunting Senate map, a more favourable House landscape and 36 governor’s races, many of which will help determine which party is best positioned to redraw legislative lines after the next census.
This year’s contest was shadowed by the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer system last year by Russian intelligence services. That resulted in the disclosure that the party, under Obama’s hand-picked chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, had sought to undermine Sanders’ candidacy.
Despite that prologue, the race was largely free of vitriol. It was so amiable, in fact, that Perez and Ellison shared dinner last week at a Washington restaurant. And after the news conference in Atlanta, they were seen exchanging cell phone numbers.
— New York Times News Service
