Some internal Democratic party drama from late January:
After a messy fight that highlighted strains with the White House, the Democratic National Committee completed what should have been the routine election of a new slate of officers Tuesday.
As expected, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida was given another term as national party chairwoman. But below that level, chaos reigned for a time as DNC members balked at rubber-stamping a White House-approved list of replacements for several veterans of the pre-Obama era. ... But many on the DNC strongly resisted the forced removal of longtime activist Alice Travis Germond as DNC secretary. Highly popular with the membership, Germond, who calls the roll of the states at presidential nominating conventions, is only the third person to hold that job since 1944. In order to tighten its control of the DNC, the White House wanted to replace her with Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, who has no experience in national politics.
Angered by the handling of the leadership change by Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama organizer who serves as the party’s executive director, DNC members tried to postpone election of the secretary until the fall. A clearly flustered Schultz, after halting the proceedings and huddling offstage with Germond, returned to announce that Germond had agreed to become secretary emeritus of the party and an at-large DNC member. With that, the slate of officers, including Rawlings-Blake, was approved. -LA Times
The three previous DNC secretaries in the last 70 years:
Alice Germond: 2002-2013 (Germond is married to political reporter Jack Germond) Sandra Perlmutter: 1989-2002 Dorothy Bush: 1944-1989. Bush called the convention roll call from From FDR's 4th nomination through Dukakis.
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