Tom Perez, the newly elected Democratic National Committee chairman, was not quite sure what to say Tuesday when pressed on Senator Bernie Sanders’ decision to keep his list of supporters to himself.
Perez quickly learned that his new job comes with some tough treatment from the press when MSNBC’s Mark Halperin directly asked him, “Why doesn’t the DNC yet have Senator Sanders’s email list?”
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Perez almost completely ignored the question, which cut to the heart of the latent divisions in the Democratic Party.
Sanders himself had highlighted the gulf between the party leadership and the “progressive” activist wing so enamored with him, refusing to deny on CNN Sunday that he was keeping his email lists out of DNC hands for use by further-left candidates only. “We are going to support those candidates that have the guts to stand up to the one-percent and fight for the ninety-nine percent,” Sanders told CNN Anchor Jake Tapper.
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Perez’s avoidance of the question on the Bernie List was likely not as artful as he would have hoped. “Well I’m meeting, actually, later this week, with Senator Sanders” was the closest he came to addressing Halperin’s query.
Perez, President Obama’s Secretary of Labor and perhaps used to a less intense media spotlight in his prior positions, instead tried to turn the focus to Democratic unity against Trump. “The President is a unifier,” he told Halperin.