The seven candidates vying to become the de facto leader of the Democratic party took the stage in Washington DC on Wednesday night to debate how best to take the fight for Donald Trump, as the capital prepared for his inauguration as the 45th president of the United States on Friday.
After the demoralizing and unexpected loss in November, the contest to choose the next chair of the Democratic National Committee has become an urgent priority.
“Donald Trump is our president in 48 hours or less,” the labor secretary, Tom Perez, one of the leading candidates for the job, said during a debate at George Washington University hosted by the Huffington Post. “We need a leader in the party who’s a fighter, who’s a proven progressive, who can be a communicator and who can be a turnaround specialist.”
Representative Keith Ellison, a grassroots organizer from Minnesota who endorsed Bernie Sanders during the primary, is considered one of the frontrunners in the race. Perez, who was a surrogate for Clinton and an ally of labor, is viewed as his chief rival for the job.
But if there were lingering tensions between the competing factions, the candidates sought to mute them during the 90-minute debate, stressing that Democrats are unified in the fight against Trump and not locked in the epochal intra-party battle that erupted during the primary race between Sanders and Clinton.
Ellison praised Perez’s achievements as labor secretary, and said that if he was elected he would “absolutely” push Sanders, who ran as a Democrat but sits in Congress as an independent, to share his vast donor base with the party.
“We are going to call upon everybody to give all the resources they have to organize everybody,” Ellison said. “We are in an emergency situation.”
In perhaps a telling sign of where the party sees its future, every hand shot up when the candidates were asked which of them considered themselves a “progressive”.
The other candidates on stage were New Hampshire Democratic party chairman Ray Buckley, South Carolina Democratic party chairman Jaime Harrison, former Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene, Idaho Democratic party executive director Sally Boynton Brown, and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg.
During the wide-ranging debate, the candidates largely agreed with one another on the right path forward for the party, arguing for a return to the 50-state model, an effort to build the party’s infrastructure at every level of government in every state as opposed to just focusing on the ones they are most likely to win. They also endorsed changes to the primary process that would help make it more transparent to members.
“We need people who are going to grassroots organize, to get on the ground … knock on doors,” said Ellison, drawing applause. “There are people who are in every single county and precinct in this country who are dying to get involved.”
In the three elections since Barack Obama won the presidency, Democrats have suffered steep losses at almost every level of government. Republicans hold the majority of governorships and state legislative chambers around the country, as well as the House, Senate and presidency in Washington.
“We sort of got drunk off of the fact we were able to elect Barack Obama as president in 2008 and again in 2012 and lost sight that we needed to focus on state parties,” said Harrison, who directs the state party in South Carolina.
The next leader will be chosen by the 447 members of the DNC at a meeting in Atlanta at the end of February.
But the candidates are treating the race like a traditional political campaign with rallies, endorsements, campaign signs – and even a bus tour.
The full slate of candidates met for the first time in Phoenix last week, the first of four “future forums” ahead of the February election. The candidates will meet again in Washington DC on Monday following Trump’s inauguration for a debate focused on voters of color.
Though Ellison and Perez have secured the endorsements of high-profile politicians and liberal groups, the race is still considered open. During the forum, the other candidates played up their outsider credentials.
“The whole idea of our party is to empower different people, new voices,” said Buttigieg, a 34-year-old veteran who is openly gay. “I know I’m not the most famous name here but the whole beauty of our system and our process is that it invites new people into it.”
At one point during the debate, Ellison was put on the defensive when the moderator asked whether the other candidates believed Haim Saban, a top Democratic donor, should apologize for calling the Minnesota liberal an “antisemite”. Ellison has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League for comments about American policy toward Israel, which he has said were “selectively edited and taken out of context”.
Most of the candidates agreed Saban should apologize, and Buckley said that the party needed to remain united: “An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us.”
Ellison said that he and Saban had spoken since the remark but refused to expand on the details of their conversation. “I think we’re on the road to recovery in that regard,” he said.
The candidates vigorously agreed that the party need to be a united front in opposing Trump, who has threatened to undo much of Obama’s agenda. In a question about whether they should work with Trump on aligning issues or resist, the prevailing opinion was to resist.
Trump “has already shown us where he stands. From the very beginning, he put in Steve Bannon, who is a renowned white supremacist and misogynist,” Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, said, referring to the former head of Breitbart News who Trump has named as chief strategist.
“He has already started to institute a rightwing program so we have to fight.”
