DNC chair unbowed by 2020 fracas: 'My job is ... to win'
Beyond the presidential candidates themselves, the Nevada caucuses Saturday will test Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez as he tries to keep an already messy primary season from devolving into chaos.
“We are working around the clock,” Perez said, predicting a smoother process than the debacle that still leaves the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses without certified results. “We’re all going to school on the lessons of Iowa.”
Aware of the stakes, Perez cautioned on Friday that Democrats’ third nominating contest is just the next step in what could be a long, bruising primary season. “As a former marathon runner,” Perez said, “I would observe we are in perhaps mile 2.”
Nevada is just the latest high-pressure crucible for Perez, the former labor secretary under President Barack Obama. Perez won the party chairmanship in a rancorous February 2017 election, and he spent the three years since promising a “fair” 2020 contest intended to avoid the infighting that hobbled Hillary Clinton in her loss to President Donald Trump in 2016.
Yet the prospects for a smooth nominating fight, if one were ever possible, evaporated in Iowa amid the failures of proprietary reporting and tabulation software that state Democrats purchased with knowledge of national party headquarters. Iowa is still in dispute after Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg each declared victory and, just this week, sought formal recounts.
Sanders and Buttigieg are part of a remaining top tier of contenders that is all-white and nearly all-male, a stark turn from what began as Democrats’ most diverse presidential field ever, something Perez, the first-ever Hispanic DNC chairman, often celebrated.
Meanwhile, the current national polling leader, Sanders, is a self-declared democratic socialist who’s eschewed the party label through...