Democrats elect Tom Perez, former Labor secretary, as new party leader

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. 

Former President Obama congratulated Perez on his win and his choice of Ellison as deputy. "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," he said in a statement. 

The greatest challenges facing Perez will be uniting Democrats and rebuilding a party infrastructure in need of major overhaul. Democrats not only lost the White House but also both chambers of Congress in the past couple elections. At the state level, the party now controls 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. ---USA Today

Source :NNA