Another top Democratic official has spoken out against the autocratic ways of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, accusing her of lying and saying he is close to calling for her resignation.
R.T. Rybak, a former mayor of Minneapolis and vice chairman of the DNC, said on Thursday that Schultz was lying when she claimed she had consulted with all of the Democratic Party officers before scheduling the six officially sanctioned primary debates in August, in a New York Times interview.
"This is not a back-and-forth between a chair and a vice chair. This is a chair of the Democratic Party wrongly stating that she consulted with all of the party officers. I was not consulted. I know that Tulsi Gabbard was not consulted. And this is becoming about much more than debates," he told the Times.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that the chair doesn't have the political skills - or more likely, want to execute the skills - to make this party a big tent. I blame myself for trying to stuff it, and trying to make things work when it's clear we have a problem," he added.
In September, Rybak and Vice Chair Rep. Tulsi Gabbard jointly called on Schultz to schedule more debates, as did Democratic candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, as HNGN previously reported. They suggested Wasserman Schultz was blatantly attempting to limit the debates to help Hillary Clinton avoid tough questions that could derail her campaign.
When Gabbard repeated her call for more debates in October on MSNBC, Wasserman Schultz disinvited her from the first debate in Las Vegas, saying she was distracting from the candidates, according to Gabbard. Wasserman Schultz then made the claim that she had indeed consulted with the party's officers before scheduling the debates.
In another interview with Bloomberg released Thursday, Rybak said he has "begun to deeply question whether she has the leadership skills to get us through the election. This is not just about how many debates we have. This is one of a series of long-running events in which the chair has not shown the political judgement that is needed."
Asked if he was calling for Wasserman Schultz to resign, Rybak told Bloomberg that he is "coming really close...I'm not quite doing that yet, but unless I see some significant shift in the way she's going to operate and see that she has some ability to reach out and include people who disagree with her, then I seriously question whether she's the right person to lead us."
Also this week, a female DNC member speaking on condition of anonymity told the Daily Mail that DNC leaders decided early on that Clinton would be the party's 2016 presidential nomination and have begun "clearing a path" for her.
"The party's female leaders really want to make a woman the next president. I haven't heard anyone say we should make Hillary undergo a trial by fire. To the contrary, the women in charge seem eager, more and more, to have her skate into the general [election]," she said.
"I have nothing against women in politics, but it's not healthy for the party if we get behind a woman because she's a woman, and risk having her implode after she's nominated because she isn't tested enough now."
