DNC reshuffle has some worrying about a 'purge' [View all]
By David Weigel and Ed O'Keefe October 19 at 7:10 PM
LAS VEGAS — The Democratic National Committee kicked off its annual meeting with a now-familiar drama — a public spat between the party’s leadership and its frustrated left-wing activists.
The latest argument began after DNC Chairman Tom Perez nominated a new slate of members for little-known but influential party committees. That slate, slightly younger and more diverse than the last one, did not include some of the highest-profile supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid and Rep. Keith Ellison’s failed bid to run the DNC, which had been backed by Sanders (I-Vt.).
“It’s a lot of really good people who deserved better,” said James Zogby, a longtime DNC member who is being replaced on the executive committee. “I’d say they’re making way for new blood, but it’s not that at all. We were Keith Ellison supporters. The optics of it are bad.”
Ellison (D-Minn.), who was made deputy chair of the party after his defeat, was among the new nominees to replace Zogby, and through a spokesman he noted that he’d given Perez a list of contenders for the jobs. One of the highest-profile Democrats removed from the new list was Barbra Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender member of the DNC. The new list — which, according to DNC spokesman Michael Tyler, was based on recommendations from state parties — included a different transgender member, Marisa Richmond.
Nonetheless, a meeting that Democrats hoped would close the door on the bitter 2016 primary produced yet another activists-vs.-establishment fight. What was reported as a “shake-up” by NBC News became, in Vanity Fair, “DNC chair purges dissenters.” At Splinter, it became “The DNC Cuts High-Profile Trans, POC Members From Party’s Left Wing in the Name of ‘Diversity.’”
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