When the Democrats pick their new national chairman this month, the choice will send a signal about the party's direction as it sets out to recover from the erosion that began even before Hillary Clinton lost the White House.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is one of two Muslims in Congress. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

If they choose Rep. Keith Ellison, an African-American congressman from Minnesota who is one of two Muslims in Congress, they will opt for an outspokenly liberal course and, in effect, turn the party over to the forces of insurgent 2016 candidate Bernie Sanders.

If they elect former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants who held elected local and statewide appointed posts in Maryland before taking two top positions under former President Barack Obama, they will choose a more centrist direction.

Tom Perez is the son of Dominican immigrants. (File Photo/The Associated Press)

And if they pick the relative unknown who has emerged as the most interesting alternative to the two perceived front-runners, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, they will elect a millennial from the industrial belt that rejected Democratic candidates in 2016.

With 447 voters, the Feb. 24 election is the kind of political contest that is notoriously difficult to predict. Ellison, Perez and Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-edge-edge) have the most organized support and got the best receptions among the nine candidates last Saturday in Detroit at the third of four party-sponsored forums for Democratic National Committee members.

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a relative unknown who has emerged as a dark-horse candidate. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune)

The others include four who have held significant positions within state and local parties: longtime New Hampshire Democratic Chairman Ray Buckley, South Carolina Democratic Chairman Jaime Harrison, Idaho Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown, and Jehmu Greene, an African-American from Austin who was executive director of the state's Young Democrats before holding several party posts in Washington and serving as a Fox News contributor. Interestingly, not one of the top seven is a straight Anglo man.

The candidates range in age from 27 to 59, ensuring a chairman younger than the party's geriatric congressional leadership. While Ellison has the most big-name endorsements, followed by Perez, those may not mean much in a party that lacks major power brokers.

None of the nine fit all of the job's requirements: spokesman, organizer, manager, fundraiser. But they agree on the need to provide the help for local and state parties that has been lacking in recent years, to reach out to the party's multiple constituencies, to make the party more transparent and accessible, and to stand up to President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn Obama's policies.

Given the high feelings among many Democrats these days, one consideration may be which candidate members feel can best make the anti-Trump case. Buttigieg got a leg up on his better known rivals as the only candidate to join one of the Jan. 21 women's marches against the new president's policies while the others were at a Florida conference for major donors, a point he noted to cheers in Detroit. After the DNC's Jan. 28 forum in Houston, Buttigieg, Perez and Harrison joined protesters against Trump's travel ban at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The high-profile supporters for Ellison, 53, led by Sanders, include Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the Steelworkers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and liberal icons Gloria Steinem and Rep. John Lewis. He agreed to leave his House seat if elected, heading off one major argument against him.

Perez, 55, who led Obama administration voting rights efforts as assistant attorney general for civil rights before becoming labor secretary, was endorsed recently by former Vice President Joe Biden. He is also backed by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former DNC chair and a key Clinton supporter; several unions including the Food and Commercial Workers, Plumbers, Bricklayers, Carpenters and Firefighters; and an array of Texas Democrats, including party chair Gilberto Hinojosa.

Buttigieg, 35, a Rhodes scholar and Afghanistan veteran who came out as gay during his first term as mayor, backed Clinton in 2016 but doesn't mention it much. He has the endorsement of Steve Grossman, party chairman during Bill Clinton's administration. Alluding to the perception the Ellison-Perez battle is "a proxy fight" for the divisive 2016 Clinton-Sanders fight, he said, "This is not a time to re-litigate an old battle."

"What I bring to the table is a little bit different," he said in Detroit, warning that, "If you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got."

Whoever wins will become an important anti-Trump voice. But as Democrats struggle to counter Trump in middle America, the young South Bend mayor raised a potentially crucial question: Should the Democratic Party do something different?

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News and a frequent columnist. Email: carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com