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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." • White House bars CNN, New York Times, others from media gaggle
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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. “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. For one thing, Ellison has also been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an establishment figure.
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.