Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez on Saturday was elected chairman of the United States Democratic National Committee, defeating top-rival Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, in their respective bids to chart the direction of the national party. Perez was elected after two rounds of balloting in Atlanta at the party’s annual winter meeting. He received 235 votes, crossing the threshold of 218 ballots.

“We are at a turning point for our party and for all Americans,” Perez said after his victory. “By getting back to basics, we can turn the Democratic Party around, take the fight to (President) Donald Trump, and win elections from school board to the Senate.”

Perez graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987 and worked as a civil rights attorney at the Justice Department. He later served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights under Attorney General Janet Reno. Perez in 2002 joined the Montgomery County Council in Maryland as the panel’s first elected Latino and served through 2006.

After his win Saturday, Perez picked Ellison as his deputy chairman. We don't have the luxury to walk out of this room divided, Ellison said. It is my honor to serve this party with Tom Perez.

Perez, now the first Latino to lead the DNC, and Ellison were among a field of seven election-day candidates that also included Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, whose late surge ultimately fell short. The election involved 435 eligible members of the national party committee.

The race between Ellison and Perez was portrayed as an ideological proxy battle between Democratic supporters for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who defeated Sanders in the party’s 2016 presidential primary. Ellison backed Sanders, while Perez backed Clinton. Ellison, who in 2006 became the first Muslim elected to Congress, was considered a champion of the party’s most progressive wing.

Perez, a Labor secretary under President Obama, is considered more of an establishment candidate, though each ran on a progressive agenda and vowed to rebuild the party at the state and local levels, in large part by appealing to Democratic voters’ opposition to Trump, a Republican.

Obama released a statement that in part said: Congratulations to my friend Tom Perez on his election to lead the Democratic Party, and on his choice of Keith Ellison. ...What unites our party is a belief in opportunity -- the idea that however you started out, whatever you look like, or whomever you love, America is the place where you can make it if you try.

Trump commented Saturday on the Perez win, in an apparent attempt to invade the news cycle. Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC, Trump tweeted. I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!</s>Days after the nation elected Donald Trump president, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison launched a campaign to run the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison was one of the first to announce his campaign to chair the party and quickly picked up powerful endorsements, including from U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer. Since the November campaign launch — he had been quietly preparing for quite a while — the race has grown.

Eight candidates are vying to lead the Democrats. Among them: Tom Perez, a former secretary of labor under President Barack Obama. Perez has garnered support from key Obama backers and is considered a strong rival to Ellison’s bid.

The other candidates include Jehmu Greene of Texas, who has served president of Rock the Vote; Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.; Jamie Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party; Sally Boynton Brown of Idaho, president of the Association of State Democratic Party Executive Directors; Peter Peckarsky, an attorney from Wisconsin; and Samuel Ronan, a U.S. Air Force veteran from Ohio.

At the Democratic National Convention Winter Meeting, about 450 Democrats — activists and party officers from across the nation — will decide whose message best suits the parties needs. All the candidates for Democratic National Committee chair have claimed they can lift the party — with organizing, fundraising and strategy.

The Saturday vote at the DNC meeting comes at a crucial time for Democrats. Republicans have seized majority control of the U.S. Congress, the presidency and many state Capitols — half of the states have complete Republican control, while only five states boost Democratic dominance.

In his campaign for chair, Ellison has said Democrats need to do a better job of speaking to and representing working people. The path back to power, he said on the Daily Show this month, is to “be fierce fighters on behalf of working people, every single day.”
• He is a Detroit native who attended the city’s Wayne State University. He went on to earn a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1990 and stayed in Minnesota to practice law.
• He was elected to the Minnesota House in 2002 and served for two terms. He quickly rose as an outspoken advocate for progressive issues that connected with his liberal, racially diverse Minneapolis district.
• Ellison is experienced in battling for Democratic support. Although he has easily been re-elected to Congress, in 2006 he was among a host of candidates vying for the party’s endorsement for the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo. Even after winning the endorsement, Ellison faced a crowded primary for the seat. He won the primary and then the November 2006 general election with 56 percent of the vote.
• When elected to the U.S. House, he was its first Muslim-American member. That has garnered him welcome and unwelcome attention, as critics have explored his past allegiance with the Nation of Islam and its anti-Semitic beliefs. That history, and more recent actions, have caused him to fight back against claims he is anti-Semitic or anti-Israel in his campaign for DNC chair.
• In Congress, he has not been considered one of the most effective members in terms of bills passed into law. But he has given voice to the most liberal interests, has been a frequent guest on national television programs and has been picked as a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
• Although he has a safe Democratic seat in Congress, he has been a significant campaign fundraiser. “Basically, we put it into promoting turnout in the district and helping other candidates who have progressive values win,” Ellison has said. Much of his cash has been spent on staff, consultants and donations to party groups.
• During his campaign, he has emphasized his work to promote turnout in the 5th Congressional District. Although turnout has increased since he has been in office in the district in presidential years, it has not gone up in non-presidential, off-year elections. The 5th District was last in the number of people voting compared to other Minnesota districts in 2006 and 2010 and was seventh in raw number of voters in 2014.
• When Ellison first announced he would run for DNC chair, he demurred when asked if he would give up his seat in Congress if he won; he later said he would. That has set off a series of announcements from state lawmakers from Minneapolis saying they would run for his seat if he vacated it.
• White House bars CNN, New York Times, others from media gaggle
• Trump’s chief of staff asked FBI to dispute Russia reports, official says
• GOP senator says she’s open to demanding Trump’s tax returns as part of Russia probe
• Joe Soucheray: An enemy of the people, under cover on the golf course</s>On the eve of the vote for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, the crowded field is thinning out.

South Carolina Democratic Chair Jaime Harrison dropped out of the race Thursday and endorsed former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. The move comes days after another candidate, New Hampshire Democratic Chair Ray Buckley, exited the race and threw his support to Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota.

The two withdrawals surely add to Perez and Ellison's vote totals, and solidify the two as the front-runners to be the next head of the Democratic Party. Both claim substantial support among the 447 DNC members who will vote for the position on Saturday morning in Atlanta, though neither is predicting a first-ballot majority.

There are still seven candidates, though South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the long shot with the best chance. He's made some waves during the race's final days, getting endorsements from former DNC chairs like Howard Dean and Ed Rendell.

Even with all the last-minute jockeying, the race has a cordial and complimentary vibe, with candidates all but falling over themselves to agree with each other at its many public forums and debates.

"We're all friends up here," Ellison said during a recent candidate forum. "We like each other. We respect each other."

"This is a conversation among siblings as to who should lead the party," Perez recently told Politico.

But if the contest seems breezy, its backdrop does not. Democrats are still reeling from a presidential loss that hardly any party officials saw coming. The party has shed hundreds of statehouse seats over the previous decade, and it is in the minority in both the House and Senate.

On top of that, the DNC has effectively been in a holding pattern since mid-2016, when WikiLeaks published internal emails that led to the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails were likely stolen and provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers, according to the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies.

Most of the candidates are vowing to borrow a page from former DNC Chair Howard Dean and spend time and money organizing the party across the country — not just in coastal states where Democrats have solidified their support in recent years.

Many agree the party needs to improve its messaging, especially when it comes to economic issues. "When Donald Trump says, 'I'm going to bring those coal jobs back,' we know that's a lie, but people understand that he feels their pain," Perez said at a recent forum. "And our response was, vote for us because he's crazy. I'll stipulate to that, but that's not a message."

While the candidates are taking pains to appear united — Perez and Ellison were recently photographed having dinner together — many are viewing the DNC race as a proxy for last year's divided presidential primary season.

Much of the party's establishment wing is backing Perez. While former President Barack Obama has stayed out of the race, Perez has been endorsed by close Obama allies like former Vice President Joe Biden and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Ellison, on the other hand, touted an early endorsement by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he has attracted support from the more liberal, grassroots activists in the Democratic Party.

This has been the main narrative of the unusually drawn-out race, but it's not quite that simple. For one thing, Ellison has also been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an establishment figure.

The eventual winner will have a lot on his or her plate. In addition to fundraising and reorganizing the DNC, the chair will likely function as one of the party's top surrogates in the media. Howard Dean views something else as the winner's most important job: "coordinating the tremendous rush of young people who are interested in the process, and really weren't much before."

Democrats in all levels of office are processing how to respond to the surge of motivated – and often angry – liberals who have taken to the streets and filled Republican congressional town halls. Engaging those folks in the political process — and steering them to the polls in future elections — will likely be the key to success for Saturday's winner.</s>Who won the DNC chair vote on Saturday?

Those interested in who will be leading the Democratic National Committee after the failure of the 2016 election will be able to follow live results of the voting and see if Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison or former Labor Secretary Tom Perez is picked to lead the party.

The race for a party chair is normally a quiet affair, filled with names not familiar to the average voter. But Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss in the 2016 presidential election combined with the allegations that former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz tilted the scales against Bernie Sanders has ratcheted up interest in the vote.

Delegates will convene on Saturday to vote for the next DNC chair, and those who follow live results are likely to see a very close race. Ellison and Perez emerged as the two frontrunners, with some others dropping out in the final week to leave what will likely be a head-to-head matchup between a former Obama appointee with connections to Hillary Clinton and a representative backed by Bernie Sanders.

As NPR noted, those who follow the live results of the DNC chair vote will see a glimpse of the Democratic Party’s future while giving a nod to the past. The report noted that candidates are looking to move past the controversy of 2016 while also planning to revive the effective “50-state strategy” that helped Barack Obama push for victories in states that had long been red.

“[T]he DNC has effectively been in a holding pattern since mid-2016, when WikiLeaks published internal emails that led to the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails were likely stolen and provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers, according to the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies. “Most of the candidates are vowing to borrow a page from former DNC Chair Howard Dean and spend time and money organizing the party across the country — not just in coastal states where Democrats have solidified their support in recent years.”

In a way, the Democratic National Committee chair race is shaping up to be a second showing of Clinton vs. Sanders. Perez to many represents the political coalition that just lost the 2016 election, while Ellison’s progressive streak continues the movement of Bernie Sanders.

“Ellison jumped into the race as the instant frontrunner, positioning himself to carry the baton of the left-wing movement that spawned from the failed presidential bid of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),” The Hill noted.

“The first Muslim elected to Congress, Ellison helps lead the Congressional Progressive Caucus and emerged as one of Sanders’ top surrogates on both the campaign trail and the DNC platform committee. That made him into a darling of Sanders supporters and allies, who have gone all in on his campaign.”

The vote itself could take quite some time. The 447 members of the Democratic National Committee will be voting among the seven choices — which also include Sam Ronan, Sally Boynton Brown, Peter Peckarsky, Pete Buttigieg, and Jehmu Greene.

A candidate needs to reach a majority of votes to be elected chair, so the members will continue voting in different rounds until someone finally reaches that mark. The candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated in each round, so it could take as many as five founds of voting before a winner is selected. And with reports indicating that it is expected to be a very close vote between Perez and Ellison, it’s likely it will take that long.

Those who want to follow live results of the DNC chair race can watch the live streaming video of the conference embedded above or click here to follow along on the Democratic National Committee’s website.</s>On the eve of the vote for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, the crowded field is thinning out.

South Carolina Democratic Chair Jamie Harrison dropped out of the race Thursday and endorsed former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. The move comes days after another candidate, New Hampshire Democratic Chair Ray Buckley, exited the race and threw his support to Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota.

The two withdrawals surely add to Perez and Ellison's vote totals, and solidify the two as the front-runners to be the next head of the Democratic Party. Both claim substantial support among the 447 DNC members who will vote for the position on Saturday morning in Atlanta, though neither is predicting a first-ballot majority.

There are still seven candidates, though South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the long shot with the best chance. He's made some waves during the race's final days, getting endorsements from former DNC chairs like Howard Dean and Ed Rendell.

Even with all the last-minute jockeying, the race has a cordial and complimentary vibe, with candidates all but falling over themselves to agree with each other at its many public forums and debates.

"We're all friends up here," Ellison said during a recent candidate forum. "We like each other. We respect each other."

"This is a conversation among siblings as to who should lead the party," Perez recently told Politico.

But if the contest seems breezy, its backdrop does not. Democrats are still reeling from a presidential loss that hardly any party officials saw coming. The party has shed hundreds of statehouse seats over the previous decade, and it is in the minority in both the House and Senate.

On top of that, the DNC has effectively been in a holding pattern since mid-2016, when WikiLeaks published internal emails that led to the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails were likely stolen and provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers, according to the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies.

Most of the candidates are vowing to borrow a page from former DNC Chair Howard Dean and spend time and money organizing the party across the country — not just in coastal states where Democrats have solidified their support in recent years.

Many agree the party needs to improve its messaging, especially when it comes to economic issues. "When Donald Trump says, 'I'm going to bring those coal jobs back,' we know that's a lie, but people understand that he feels their pain," Perez said at a recent forum. "And our response was, vote for us because he's crazy. I'll stipulate to that, but that's not a message."

While the candidates are taking pains to appear united — Perez and Ellison were recently photographed having dinner together — many are viewing the DNC race as a proxy for last year's divided presidential primary season.

Much of the party's establishment wing is backing Perez. While former President Barack Obama has stayed out of the race, Perez has been endorsed by close Obama allies like former Vice President Joe Biden and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Ellison, on the other hand, touted an early endorsement by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he has attracted support from the more liberal, grassroots activists in the Democratic Party.

This has been the main narrative of the unusually drawn-out race, but it's not quite that simple. For one thing, Ellison has also been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an establishment figure.

The eventual winner will have a lot on his or her plate. In addition to fundraising and reorganizing the DNC, the chair will likely function as one of the party's top surrogates in the media. Howard Dean views something else as the winner's most important job: "coordinating the tremendous rush of young people who are interested in the process, and really weren't much before."

Democrats in all levels of office are processing how to respond to the surge of motivated – and often angry – liberals who have taken to the streets and filled Republican congressional town halls. Engaging those folks in the political process — and steering them to the polls in future elections — will likely be the key to success for Saturday's winner.</s>Democrats chose President Obama’s former Labor secretary, Tom Perez, as the person to lead them out of a political wilderness of heavy losses at every level of government over the past eight years and amid tensions between moderates and progressives about how to rebuild the party after Hillary Clinton's unexpected presidential loss to Donald Trump.

Perez’s election as the next Democratic National Committee chair is a reflection of the party’s leftward tug – all of the contestants packaged themselves as progressives eager to tangle with Trump on voting and civil rights and economic policies favoring the wealthy.



 Perez, the party's first Latino leader, won with 235 votes in a second round of balloting after coming one vote short of a majority in the initial round. His opponent, Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, received 200 votes. A group of Ellison supporters reacted angrily at the tally and stormed out chanting “no big money. Party for the people.”

Within moments, Perez announced he would make Ellison a deputy chair as the room erupted in applause. Ellison urged everyone to support Perez. “If we waste even a moment going at it over who supported whom we are not going to be standing up for those people,” he said, referring to struggling Americans.

A former Department of Justice civil rights lawyer, Perez emphasized his résumé fighting against former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona on immigration issues, stopping voter ID laws and taking on Wall Street in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

Yet he was also the more establishment-aligned alternative in what essentially became a two-way race in the final stretch. Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed Perez. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressive leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., favorited Ellison.

Ellison's confrontational style raised some concerns about his ability to connect with white working-class voters in the Rust Belt states that flipped to Trump in 2016. Pennsylvania, for example, hadn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988. But Ellison is also a powerful speaker who could have excited the party's progressive base.

The greatest challenges facing Perez will be uniting Democrats and rebuilding a party infrastructure in need of a major overhaul. Democrats not only lost the White House but also both chambers of Congress in the past couple elections. At the state level, they now control the legislature in just 13 states, compared to 32 controlled by Republicans amid widespread complaints the DNC focused its resources on presidential races at the expense of local party building.

"We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance. We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump ... We also need a chair who can lead turnaround and change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC," Perez said in a final appeal to DNC members, emphasizing the importance of "working to elect from the school board to the Senate."

Party officials and keynote speakers made no attempt to conceal tensions between some Perez and Ellison supporters. “There’s no secret that there’s division, even in this camp,” said Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. who addressed the crowd ahead of the vote. “We came here in different ships and boats but we’re all in the same boat now,” she said. “If we don’t come together as brothers and sisters, we’re going to perish as fools."

Perez consolidated support in the final moments of the race when other candidates, including South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, a dark horse who drew significant attention, dropped out.

Perez's challenge now will be preventing his party from making the mistakes Republicans did in responding to their own grassroots rebellion. Just as the Tea Party pulled the GOP further to the right, there is a progressive pull to the left after a heated primary battle between Clinton and Sanders, who frequently drew connections between her and Wall Street interests.

“Bernie did not get a fair shake” from the DNC leadership, said Brian Ellison, a Detroit pastor and one of Keith Ellison’s brothers, and “people are very upset about that to this day.”

But even before Perez announced Keith Ellison as his deputy, Ellison made an appeal for unity. "We’ve gotta walk out of here with unity not just between the candidates” but between party members, he said. "Trump is right outside that door — and not just Trump but Trumpism.”

"You are the ones who can bring comfort to people fearing a ban or a wall or losing their Social Security," Ellison added. "The American people need us in this moment."

Many wearing green Ellison shirts expressed similar sentiments. Still some, including Ohio state senator Nina Turner, warned before the vote that “if Congressman Ellison is not elected there’s lots of people who are prepared to walk.”

The divide between progressive and more moderate members was also on display in a debate over an amendment about DNC rules governing accepting corporate money that was voted down, with some members chanting “money out of politics.”

The question going forward is whether the party divide is significant to rival the Tea Party. In the first couple of election cycles, Tea Party Republicans who won their primary went on to lose seats to Democrats in the general election.

More immediately, the major challenge for Perez is fundraising. The Republican National Committee raised $19.8 million in January, setting a record. While the Democratic Party’s traditional grassroots machine, labor unions, are fighting for survival, Republicans have built a powerhouse of outside groups like the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity that is bolstering local GOP officials from county commissioner to governor.

“We’ve got a tremendous wind at our back. Not only do we hold large majorities but the enthusiasm I’m seeing among the grassroots among state and county committee people and this new insurgence of Trump supporters is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Val DiGiorgio, chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

Democrats expect the new chair to reinvigorate local parties who complain national outside groups, like Obama’s Organizing for Action, drain talent and resources resulting in a disproportionate share of resources going to presidential candidates.

The DNC needs “an overall culture change to get out of the Washington-centered model they have” said Michigan chair Brandon Dillon.

Ohio chair David Pepper added: “The basic capacity for state parties to do what state parties should be doing has really eroded over the past decade."

The forum also spotlighted a number of potential rising stars in the Democratic Party. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who's expected to lead many of the legal battles against the new administration, delivered the keynote address.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who narrowly lost his 2016 Senate race, also spoke. Kander has started a new national voting rights organization.

“There’s something happening in this country right now,” Kander said. “This is a level of activism most of us have not seen in our lifetimes,” he said. “We may be living in the nightmare that is the Trump presidency, but we are awake, we are on our feet and we are marching forward."

Buttigieg may have been the break-out star after withdrawing his nomination. In his speech, he called for healing even with Trump voters. “The world is not divided into good people and bad people. Every one of us can and will do good things and bad things every day,” he said.

“Leaders matter because of what they bring out in the rest of us,” Buttigieg added. "Right now we have leaders who bring out the worst in us. They call on the darkest things within us,” he said, calling on Democrats to become “happy warriors.”</s>Democrats chose President Obama’s former Labor secretary, Tom Perez, as the person to lead them out of a political wilderness of heavy losses at every level of government over the past eight years and amid tensions between moderates and progressives about how to rebuild the party after Hillary Clinton's unexpected presidential loss to Donald Trump.

Perez’s election as the next Democratic National Committee chair is a reflection of the party’s leftward tug – all of the contestants packaged themselves as progressives eager to tangle with Trump on voting and civil rights and economic policies favoring the wealthy.



 Perez, the party's first Latino leader, won with 235 votes in a second round of balloting after coming one vote short of a majority in the initial round. His opponent, Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, received 200 votes. A group of Ellison supporters reacted angrily at the tally and stormed out chanting “no big money. Party for the people.”

Within moments, Perez announced he would make Ellison a deputy chair as the room erupted in applause. Ellison urged everyone to support Perez. “If we waste even a moment going at it over who supported whom we are not going to be standing up for those people,” he said, referring to struggling Americans.

A former Department of Justice civil rights lawyer, Perez emphasized his résumé fighting against former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona on immigration issues, stopping voter ID laws and taking on Wall Street in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

Yet he was also the more establishment-aligned alternative in what essentially became a two-way race in the final stretch. Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed Perez. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressive leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., favorited Ellison.

Ellison's confrontational style raised some concerns about his ability to connect with white working-class voters in the Rust Belt states that flipped to Trump in 2016. Pennsylvania, for example, hadn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988. But Ellison is also a powerful speaker who could have excited the party's progressive base.

The greatest challenges facing Perez will be uniting Democrats and rebuilding a party infrastructure in need of a major overhaul. Democrats not only lost the White House but also both chambers of Congress in the past couple elections. At the state level, they now control the legislature in just 13 states, compared to 32 controlled by Republicans amid widespread complaints the DNC focused its resources on presidential races at the expense of local party building.

"We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance. We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump ... We also need a chair who can lead turnaround and change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC," Perez said in a final appeal to DNC members, emphasizing the importance of "working to elect from the school board to the Senate."

Party officials and keynote speakers made no attempt to conceal tensions between some Perez and Ellison supporters. “There’s no secret that there’s division, even in this camp,” said Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. who addressed the crowd ahead of the vote. “We came here in different ships and boats but we’re all in the same boat now,” she said. “If we don’t come together as brothers and sisters, we’re going to perish as fools."

Perez consolidated support in the final moments of the race when other candidates, including South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, a dark horse who drew significant attention, dropped out.

Perez's challenge now will be preventing his party from making the mistakes Republicans did in responding to their own grassroots rebellion. Just as the Tea Party pulled the GOP further to the right, there is a progressive pull to the left after a heated primary battle between Clinton and Sanders, who frequently drew connections between her and Wall Street interests.

“Bernie did not get a fair shake” from the DNC leadership, said Brian Ellison, a Detroit pastor and one of Keith Ellison’s brothers, and “people are very upset about that to this day.”

But even before Perez announced Keith Ellison as his deputy, Ellison made an appeal for unity. "We’ve gotta walk out of here with unity not just between the candidates” but between party members, he said. "Trump is right outside that door — and not just Trump but Trumpism.”

"You are the ones who can bring comfort to people fearing a ban or a wall or losing their Social Security," Ellison added. "The American people need us in this moment."

Many wearing green Ellison shirts expressed similar sentiments. Still some, including Ohio state senator Nina Turner, warned before the vote that “if Congressman Ellison is not elected there’s lots of people who are prepared to walk.”

The divide between progressive and more moderate members was also on display in a debate over an amendment about DNC rules governing accepting corporate money that was voted down, with some members chanting “money out of politics.”

The question going forward is whether the party divide is significant to rival the Tea Party. In the first couple of election cycles, Tea Party Republicans who won their primary went on to lose seats to Democrats in the general election.

More immediately, the major challenge for Perez is fundraising. The Republican National Committee raised $19.8 million in January, setting a record. While the Democratic Party’s traditional grassroots machine, labor unions, are fighting for survival, Republicans have built a powerhouse of outside groups like the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity that is bolstering local GOP officials from county commissioner to governor.

“We’ve got a tremendous wind at our back. Not only do we hold large majorities but the enthusiasm I’m seeing among the grassroots among state and county committee people and this new insurgence of Trump supporters is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Val DiGiorgio, chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

Democrats expect the new chair to reinvigorate local parties who complain national outside groups, like Obama’s Organizing for Action, drain talent and resources resulting in a disproportionate share of resources going to presidential candidates.

The DNC needs “an overall culture change to get out of the Washington-centered model they have” said Michigan chair Brandon Dillon.

Ohio chair David Pepper added: “The basic capacity for state parties to do what state parties should be doing has really eroded over the past decade."

The forum also spotlighted a number of potential rising stars in the Democratic Party. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who's expected to lead many of the legal battles against the new administration, delivered the keynote address.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who narrowly lost his 2016 Senate race, also spoke. Kander has started a new national voting rights organization.

“There’s something happening in this country right now,” Kander said. “This is a level of activism most of us have not seen in our lifetimes,” he said. “We may be living in the nightmare that is the Trump presidency, but we are awake, we are on our feet and we are marching forward."

Buttigieg may have been the break-out star after withdrawing his nomination. In his speech, he called for healing even with Trump voters. “The world is not divided into good people and bad people. Every one of us can and will do good things and bad things every day,” he said.

“Leaders matter because of what they bring out in the rest of us,” Buttigieg added. "Right now we have leaders who bring out the worst in us. They call on the darkest things within us,” he said, calling on Democrats to become “happy warriors.”</s>ATLANTA – Democrats chose President Obama’s former Labor secretary, Tom Perez, as the person to lead them out of a political wilderness of heavy losses at every level of government over the past eight years and amid tensions between moderates and progressives about how to rebuild the party after Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss to Donald Trump.

Perez’s election as the next Democratic National Committee chair is a reflection of the party’s leftward drift – all of the contestants packaged themselves as progressives eager to tangle with Trump on voting and civil rights and economic policies favoring the wealthy.

Perez won narrowly in a second round of balloting after coming one vote short of a majority in an initial round. A group of supporters for his opponent, Keith Ellison, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, reacted angrily and stormed out of the room chanting “no big money. Party for the people.”

Within moments, Perez announced he would make Ellison a deputy chair as the room erupted in applause.

Ellison urged everyone to support Perez. “If we waste even a moment going at it over who supported whom we are not going to be standing up for those people,” referring to struggling Americans, he said.

A former Department of Justice civil rights lawyer, Perez emphasized fighting against former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona on immigration issues, stopping voter ID laws and taking on Wall Street in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

Yet he was also the more establishment-aligned alternative in what had essentially become a two-way race in its final stretch. Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed Perez. Ellison was the favorite of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressive leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Ellison's confrontational style raised some concerns about his ability to connect with white working-class voters in the Rust Belt states that flipped to Trump in 2016. Pennsylvania, for example, hadn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988.

The greatest challenges facing the next leader is uniting Democrats and rebuilding a party infrastructure in need of a major overhaul. Democrats not only lost the White House but also both chambers of Congress in the past couple elections. At the state level, they now control the legislature in just 13 states, compared to 32 controlled by Republicans amid widespread complaints the DNC focused it resources on presidential races at the expense of local party building.

"We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance. We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump," Perez said in a final appeal to DNC members. "We also need a chair who can lead turnaround and change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC," said Perez, emphasizing the importance of "working to elect from the school board to the Senate."

The aftermath of the vote — and whether Ellison supporters embrace Perez — is an initial test of party unity needed to take on Trump and the Republican-led Congress. Party officials and keynote speakers made no attempt to conceal tensions between some Perez and Ellison supporters.

“There’s no secret that there’s division, even in this camp,” said Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., who addressed the crowd ahead of the vote. “We came here in different ships and boats but we’re all in the same boat now,” King said. “If we don’t come together as brothers and sisters, we’re going to perish as fools."

Perez consolidated support in the final moments of the race when South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, a dark horse who drew significant attention, helped avoid a drawn out series of balloting by withdrawing his nomination.

Just as the Republican Tea Party pulled the GOP further to the right, there is a progressive tug to the left after a heated primary battle between Clinton and Sanders, who frequently drew connections between her and Wall Street interests.

“Bernie did not get a fair shake” from the DNC leadership, said Brian Ellison, a Detroit pastor and one of Keith Ellison’s brothers, and “people are very upset about that to this day.”

Even so, in his speech, Keith Ellison made an appeal for unity. "We’ve gotta walk out of here with unity not just between the candidates” but between party members, he said. "Trump is right outside that door — and not just Trump but Trumpism.”

"You are the ones who can bring comfort to people fearing a ban or a wall or losing their Social Security," Ellison added. "The American people need us in this moment," he said.

If the vote is fair and “transparent there will be unity,” assured Ellison's brother, who huddled with other supporters in the back of conference room.

Many wearing green Ellison shirts expressed similar sentiments. Still some, including Ohio state senator Nina Turner, warned that “if Congressman Ellison is not elected there’s lots of people who are prepared to walk.” The divide between progressive and more moderate members was also on display in a debate over an amendment about DNC rules governing accepting corporate money that was voted down, with some members chanting “money out of politics.”

The question going forward is whether the party divide is significant to rival the Tea Party. In the first couple of election cycles, Tea Party Republicans who won their primary went on to lose seats to Democrats in the general election.

More immediately, the major challenge for the new chair is fundraising. The Republican National Committee raised $19.8 million in January, setting a record. While the Democratic Party’s traditional grassroots machine, labor unions, are fighting for survival, Republicans have built a powerhouse of outside groups like the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity that is bolstering local GOP officials from county commissioner to governor.

“We’ve got a tremendous wind at our back. Not only do we hold large majorities but the enthusiasm I’m seeing among the grassroots among state and county committee people and this new insurgence of Trump supporters is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Val DiGiorgio, chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

Democrats are expecting the new DNC chair to help reinvigorate local parties who’ve complained that national outside groups, like Obama’s Organizing for Action, have drained talent and resources resulting in a disproportionate share of resources going to presidential candidates.

The DNC needs “an overall culture change to get out of the Washington-centered model they have” said Michigan chair Brandon Dillon. “The basic capacity for state parties to do what state parties should be doing has really eroded over the past decade,” said Ohio chair David Pepper.

The forum also spotlighted a number of potential rising stars in the Democratic Party. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who's expected to lead many of the legal battles against the new administration, delivered the keynote address.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who narrowly lost his 2016 Senate race, also gave speeches. Kander has started a new national voting rights organization.

“There’s something happening in this country right now,” Kander said. “This is a level of activism most of us have not seen in our lifetimes,” he said. “We may be living in the nightmare that is the Trump presidency, but we are awake, we are on our feet and we are marching forward,” he said.

Buttigieg may have been the break-out star after withdrawing his nomination. In his speech, he called for healing even with Trump voters. “The world is not divided into good people and bad people. Every one of us can and will do good things and bad things every day,” Buttigieg said.

“Leaders matter because of what they bring out in the rest of us,” Buttigieg said. "Right now we have leaders who bring out the worst in us. They call on the darkest things within us,” he said, calling on Democrats to become “happy warriors.”</s>ATLANTA — Democrats selected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez over Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison as their new chairman on Saturday, concluding a hotly contested race to lead a battered party as it tries to channel the anti-Donald Trump energy of its base into an electoral rebound.

Perez defeated Ellison in a 235-200 vote among the Democratic National Committee’s 435 members who cast ballots Saturday.

It took two rounds of voting to select a winner after Perez found himself just one vote shy in the first ballot. The five other candidates, who had amassed 13.5 total votes, all exited the race before the second round began.

In a victory speech, Perez vowed that Democrats would wage an all-out battle to deny Trump a second term.

“We are at a ‘where were you?’ moment in American history: Where were you in 2017 when we had the worst President in US history?” he said.

Immediately after winning, Perez made a quick move to bring Ellison’s supporters into the fold — appointing Ellison as the deputy chair of the DNC, to cheers and unanimous approval from the crowd.

“It’s my honor to serve this party under the chairmanship of Tom Perez,” he said.

The results brought a chaotic close to a race that stretched on for three months. In the waning days, former Vice President Joe Biden and several aides to former President Barack Obama — including Valerie Jarrett and David Simas — made calls to undecided members in an effort to sway them toward Perez.

In Ellison’s camp, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and supportive members of Congress applied pressure on DNC members with phone calls.

The behind-the-scenes calls underscored why the race was broadly seen as a proxy battle between the Sanders-aligned progressive wing of the party, which supported Ellison, and those more closely connected with Hillary Clinton and Obama, who largely backed Perez.

By selecting Perez — and again spurning Sanders supporters — Democrats risk the backlash that could come with leaving the left wing of the party disappointed a second time in the past year.

In a statement congratulating Perez, Sanders said “it is imperative that Tom understands that the same-old, same-old is not working and that we must open the doors of the party to working people and young people in a way that has never been done before.

“Now, more than ever, the Democratic Party must make it clear that it is prepared to stand up to the 1% and lead this country forward in the fight for social, racial, economic and environmental justice,” he said.

Perez, a Maryland Democrat who worked in Obama’s Justice Department before serving as labor secretary and making Clinton’s short list for the vice presidential nomination, made overtures to Ellison’s backers in his nomination speech before the votes were cast.

“Good leaders are great listeners. You will always have my ear, and I will always have your back,” Perez told the crowd, promising to “plan strategy together, lift each other up together.”

“You will not be underutilized,” he said. “You are of import in everything we do. The most important question you will hear from me is, ‘What do you think?'”

“A united Democratic Party is not only our best hope, it’s Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” Perez added.

Democrats had long anticipated the election could require several ballots to settle the contest and might drag on for much of the day Saturday.

But the pool of votes that the candidates aside from Ellison and Perez would amass shrank significantly when New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley dropped out a week ago to support Ellison and then South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison exited to back Perez.

On Saturday, Pete Buttigieg, the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, dropped out minutes before the vote without endorsing another candidate.

The move allowed Buttigieg, who is seen as a rising star within the Democratic ranks, to reap the benefits of the bigger stage of the DNC race without suffering the embarrassment of a low vote total or angering either camp by making a last-second endorsement.

“We saw the potential of doing well on multiple ballots, but we can do the math,” he said in what was supposed to be his nomination speech. “It is time for this process to move toward a solution that we can all get on board with.”

Buttigieg’s exit left Idaho Democratic Party executive director Sally Boynton Brown as the third-place contender, drawing 12 votes in the first round before dropping out.

Television analyst Jehmu Greene, Air Force veteran Sam Ronan and attorney Peter Peckarsky also ran. Greene received half a vote in the first round of balloting before dropping out. Ronan and Peckarsky received none before doing the same. And one voter backed Buttigieg in the first round despite his having already dropped out of the race.</s>On the eve of the vote for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, the crowded field is thinning out.

South Carolina Democratic Chair Jaime Harrison dropped out of the race Thursday and endorsed former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. The move comes days after another candidate, New Hampshire Democratic Chair Ray Buckley, exited the race and threw his support to Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota.

The two withdrawals surely add to Perez and Ellison's vote totals, and solidify the two as the front-runners to be the next head of the Democratic Party. Both claim substantial support among the 447 DNC members who will vote for the position on Saturday morning in Atlanta, though neither is predicting a first-ballot majority.

There are still seven candidates, though South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the long shot with the best chance. He's made some waves during the race's final days, getting endorsements from former DNC chairs like Howard Dean and Ed Rendell.

Even with all the last-minute jockeying, the race has a cordial and complimentary vibe, with candidates all but falling over themselves to agree with each other at its many public forums and debates.

"We're all friends up here," Ellison said during a recent candidate forum. "We like each other. We respect each other."

"This is a conversation among siblings as to who should lead the party," Perez recently told Politico.

But if the contest seems breezy, its backdrop does not. Democrats are still reeling from a presidential loss that hardly any party officials saw coming. The party has shed hundreds of statehouse seats over the previous decade, and it is in the minority in both the House and Senate.

On top of that, the DNC has effectively been in a holding pattern since mid-2016, when WikiLeaks published internal emails that led to the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails were likely stolen and provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers, according to the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies.

Most of the candidates are vowing to borrow a page from former DNC Chair Howard Dean and spend time and money organizing the party across the country — not just in coastal states where Democrats have solidified their support in recent years.

Many agree the party needs to improve its messaging, especially when it comes to economic issues. "When Donald Trump says, 'I'm going to bring those coal jobs back,' we know that's a lie, but people understand that he feels their pain," Perez said at a recent forum. "And our response was, vote for us because he's crazy. I'll stipulate to that, but that's not a message."

While the candidates are taking pains to appear united — Perez and Ellison were recently photographed having dinner together — many are viewing the DNC race as a proxy for last year's divided presidential primary season.

Much of the party's establishment wing is backing Perez. While former President Barack Obama has stayed out of the race, Perez has been endorsed by close Obama allies like former Vice President Joe Biden and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Ellison, on the other hand, touted an early endorsement by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he has attracted support from the more liberal, grassroots activists in the Democratic Party.

This has been the main narrative of the unusually drawn-out race, but it's not quite that simple. For one thing, Ellison has also been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an establishment figure.

The eventual winner will have a lot on his or her plate. In addition to fundraising and reorganizing the DNC, the chair will likely function as one of the party's top surrogates in the media. Howard Dean views something else as the winner's most important job: "coordinating the tremendous rush of young people who are interested in the process, and really weren't much before."

Democrats in all levels of office are processing how to respond to the surge of motivated – and often angry – liberals who have taken to the streets and filled Republican congressional town halls. Engaging those folks in the political process — and steering them to the polls in future elections — will likely be the key to success for Saturday's winner.
Voting takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, to elect a new Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Candidates include Sally Boynton Brown, Keith Ellison, Jehmu Greene and former United States Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.