Scandal-ridden Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota declares that he supports a rule change within the Democratic Party that would ban lobbyist contributions to the Democratic National Convention (DNC), according to a Huffington Post interview published Wednesday.
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Ellison is at the top of the list to replace current leadership as the new DNC chairman in the coming election, a bid that is challenged by U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley.
“I think it’s important that people feel that the party is their party … There is a pragmatic, perhaps too pragmatic step that you can say, ‘We’ll just take whatever money from whatever source in whatever amount,’” Ellison said about the effort to ban lobbyist donations.
“But once you do that, I think you cross a line where people do not feel that the party is really theirs.”
President Barack Obama started the ban, but former Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz allowed the donations to resume at the beginning of the 2016 campaign cycle. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders vocally opposed the move throughout the course of the presidential campaign.
Wasserman-Schultz’s decision raked in an additional $18.7 million in 2016 for the Democratic Party, around 8 percent of the total amount raised by the organization.
Perez didn’t commit one way or another on the ban, according to Politico.
President-elect Donald Trump strongly opposed the influence of lobbyist money during his campaign, launching the famous #draintheswamp hashtag in late October.
Trump fired lobbyists from his transition team in November, and instituted rules that forbade anyone from entering the private sector for two years after working either in the administration or the transition team.
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