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Political Odds: Bid For DNC Chair Comes To A Boil

Don Aguero

by Don Aguero in Entertainment

Updated Jan 17, 2018 · 9:39 AM PST

Disgraced former Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz - Caricature" by DonkeyHotey [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

On Saturday, February 25th, 447 Democratic National Committee members will vote for the next DNC chairperson. Usually this would be a quiet affair and oftentimes a candidate runs uncontested. But not this time.

The position caught the public eye when former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign after it was revealed she had shown bias in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Then, interim chairperson Donna Brazile was caught leaking debate questions to Clinton.

Currently, there are a bunch of candidates vying for the position and the race has become closer than initially expected.

The eight major candidates recently engaged in a televised debate on CNN, but there wasn’t much disagreement. They all repeated the same talking points and stood largely in agreement with one another.

 

 

Each candidate vowed to take a hardline approach with Donald Trump, with some going as far as pushing for impeachment. But there’s a huge gulf between what the Democrats would like to achieve and their power to actually do so. The party is incredibly weak at the moment, having lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Realistically, the DNC chair can provide little help in resisting Trump.

Instead, the vote will decide the direction the party takes. There’s currently a power struggle within between the establishment wing, led by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the progressive wing, led by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Tom Perez, the former Labor Secretary under Obama, represents the Democratic establishment. He’s sealed the endorsement of Joe Biden and has received glowing praise from Barack Obama. On the other end, there’s Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Congressman championed by Warren and Sanders.

Also in the race is Pete Buttigieg, the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana and up-and-comer in the Democratic Party. He’s seen by many as the future of the party, but currently  doesn’t have the same amount of support as Perez or Ellison.

At the end of the day, the vote comes down to 447 Democratic Party insiders. And those voters are more likely to side with an established candidate. There’s a lot of buzz over Ellison, but Perez remains the favorite.


Odds to be the next Democratic National Committee chair:

Tom Perez: 9/11
Keith Ellison: 7/3
Pete Buttigieg: 9/1
Jehmu Greene: 99/1
Peter Peckarsky: 99/1
Sally Boynton Brown: 99/1
Samuel Ronan: 99/1

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