Top Democrat Says Tom Perez Must Step Down As DNC Chair
The chaos amid the controversial rollout of the Iowa caucus data prompted Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Tom Perez to call for a recanvass of results. Despite his efforts, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price denied his call, and now a top Democrat is calling for Perez to resign from his position, The Hill reports.
During an interview with The Hill, Rep. Marcia Fudge, who chairs the House Administration Committee’s subpanel on elections, slammed Perez’s leadership and accused him of shifting blame to lower-ranking Democratic Party members in Iowa.
“It’s a lack of leadership. If you have the Iowa situation you don’t throw them under the bus, you stand up and you support and you try to fix it. He doesn’t lead on anything.”
Fudge, who endorsed Kamala Harris when she was in the Democratic presidential race, also took aim at Perez’s alleged failure to add minority leads to the Congressional Black Caucus, which she formerly ran, and accused him of doing nothing but “lip service” to the issue.
Perez often bears the brunt of mounting criticism of the DNC, and the recent Iowa caucus debacle appears to have intensified calls for his resignation from the governing body. As The Inquisitr previously reported, former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson took aim at Perez amid the delayed Iowa caucus results.
“In a healthy democracy, Tom Perez would resign today,” she tweeted.
On Thursday, amid reports of discrepancies in the data from the Iowa caucuses, Williamson doubled down on her comments.
“The only way for the Democratic party to regain and retain the trust of its own members is for Tom Perez to resign immediately, the DNC to take full responsibility for this mess, and for the American people to see a realignment of the process with fairness and integrity,” she tweeted.
you know things are getting weird when james carville has asked for tom perez to resign before chapo trap house pic.twitter.com/fvbuqK6qQp
— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) February 6, 2020
Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen echoed Williamson and called from Perez to step down from his position. He claimed that Perez is the face of an establishment that has prioritized its own well-being above the success of the party. This accusation appears to be supported by reports that Perez’s call for a recanvass of Iowa results stemmed from a fear of bad optics in the chance that a presidential candidate called for such action first.
According to Dayen, Perez inspires a “complete lack of confidence” in the party’s volunteers, who he notes are necessary to win the “critical” 2020 election against Donald Trump.
