After Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s latest political misstep, a member of the Democratic National Committee sees the congresswoman “as the Democrats’ disastrous destruction.”
“We wish she would go away and stop being so public by doubling down on negative stories,” Nikki Barnes, a DNC member from Florida, told Politico.
Wasserman Schultz has recently come under fire after she continued for months to employ an IT staffer under federal investigation for allegedly stealing equipment and data from members of the U.S. House.
Imran Awan was fired by Wasserman Schultz the day after he was arrested on a mortgage fraud charge while trying to flee to Pakistan.
Wasserman Schultz told the Sun-Sentinel last week that she didn’t immediately fire Awan because she had “grave concerns” his due process rights were “being violated.”
“There were racial and ethnic profiling concerns that I had,” she said.
Barnes countered that the congresswoman’s defense doesn’t make sense.
“It doesn’t sound like racial profiling … there must have been something for her,” she said.
Barnes sees Wasserman Schultz as hurting the Democratic Party more than helping it after a devastating loss to President Trump.
Wasserman Schultz left the Democratic Party in “shambles” after WikiLeaks released internal emails from the 2016 campaign that appeared to show the party favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, Barnes said.
“Those of us on the DNC know we have to rebrand ourselves and earn the people’s trust. And unfortunately Debbie’s name does not scream trust. It screams power. It screams limited access. It screams WikiLeaks now. DNC lawsuit. It screams a lot of negative things to the public. That’s not how we want to rebrand ourselves,” Barnes said.
Former DNC Vice Chairman R.T. Rybak believes Wasserman Schultz “deserves the negative reputation.”
“I can mention her name in Minneapolis and it gets a viscerally negative reaction, and I’ve found that to be the case in other parts of the country, too,” he said.
