PHILADELPHIA – Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will better serve her party by joining Hillary Clinton’s campaign than by remaining at the helm of the DNC, delegates told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
“She has a lot of experience. She ran her own campaigns successfully and she understands the inner workings of the party,” said Katie Harrison, an alternate member of Pennsylvania’s Democratic delegation who supports Clinton.
“[Wasserman Schultz] probably has very good relationships with people in the party that we need to have relationships with,” Harrison added. “My guess is that people in the Sanders camp probably respect her more than we’re seeing in the media, so I think she brings a lot of experience and a lot of connections to the campaign.”
The DNC chairwoman plans to resign from her post at the end of the Democrats’ national convention this week and will immediately join the Clinton campaign as honorary chair of the former secretary of state’s 50-state program. Her resignation comes on the heels of a controversy stirred by newly-leaked emails that showed DNC officials plotting ways to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign throughout the primary.
“The issue with the emails is probably going to blow over,” Harrison predicted. “The bigger concern here is that we get a Democrat elected.”
Jacqueline Silver, a pro-Sanders delegate from the Keystone State, said Wasserman Schultz made the right decision to step down following the “unfortunate and disturbing” revelations in the leaked DNC emails.
But unlike other Sanders delegates, who’ve slammed the chairwoman for meddling in the primary and taunted her at a Florida delegation breakfast Monday morning, Silver applauded Wasserman Schultz for joining Team Clinton.
“The emails are very unfortunate and disturbing for our political process, but I think she can do the job for the rest of this convention and then move on,” Silver told the Washington Examiner. “I know that Sanders is on board, working to get Clinton elected, and if Debbie can help that process then it’s OK to have her there.”
Not every delegate was satisfied with Wasserman Schultz’s immediate transition from DNC chair to Clinton campaign operative – especially Jim Savage, a Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania.
“They just gave her the title she already had,” he said.
