DNC chair Tom Perez laid out two plans for the future of the party’s superdelegates: One that would create three categories of them and another that would bar all of them from first-round roll-call voting. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images House Dems seethe over superdelegates plan The Democratic National Committee is set to meet this week to decide on a reform plan that would rein in superdelegates.

The controversial issue of “superdelegates” and their future in the Democratic Party led to an angry confrontation on Tuesday night between Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and House Democrats, according to several lawmakers.

But the members’ angst may not help them since it appears that the DNC is ready to rein in the status of superdelegates, also known as “unpledged” delegates, no matter what lawmakers say or do.


Superdelegates include members of Congress, governors, party elders such as former presidents and vice presidents, DNC members and other assorted “distinguished party leaders.” They made up roughly 15 percent of the delegates during the 2016 convention. Unlike other delegates, they are free to vote for any candidate they want.

The logic is that party leaders immersed in the candidates and issues of the day can provide a guardrail against selecting an “unelectable” nominee for the general election. But the party base loathes this elite class of delegates, saying it stacks the primary process against the wishes of regular voters.

Superdelegates were created more than 35 years ago following the bitter convention fight between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. Democratic activists’ desire to eliminate or scale down superdelegates grew in the wake of the sometimes ugly intraparty contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016. It now appears that those grass-roots activists have the support they need to win any contest over the issue, even if the party establishment is upset by the move.

During a two-hour-plus meeting with a group of House Democrats at DNC headquarters, Perez laid out two options under consideration for superdelegates by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. The rules committee will meet on the issue Friday, and there’s a June 30 deadline for any proposed amendments to the DNC charter, which will be voted on during a key August party meeting, right in the middle of election season.

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The first proposal — a product of the “Unity Reform Commission,” established at the 2016 convention to “revise and reduce” the role of superdelegates — would create three categories of superdelegates. Some superdelegates would be allowed to vote in the first roll-call vote for the presidential nominee, while others would not.

However, Perez warned members that this proposal wouldn’t win enough backing to be adopted at the August DNC session.

The second option, which Perez supports and which appears far more likely to be enacted, would allow superdelegates to continue to exist, but they couldn’t vote during the first round of the presidential roll-call vote. They could, however, vote during the second round or any subsequent roll call, and they would still be permitted to support any candidate they wanted.

Perez believes this approach ensures that “we have an inclusive party, transparent process, democratic principles, and empowers the grass roots,” a DNC official said.

And that’s what set the House members off, because none of them believes there will be any more than one roll-call vote for the nominee.

In their view, that means elected Democratic officials — who have been put into office by hundreds of thousands or even millions of constituents — won’t play a role in nominating their party’s presidential candidate.

“I believe this decision, if they go forward, is going to do terrible damage to party harmony,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who raised his objections with Perez during Tuesday’s dinner. “It disenfranchises the elected leadership of the party. The last time we allowed that to happen was 1972, and we had the worst landslide in our history.”

“I believe that elected officials across the country — Congress and governors — I believe they provide a ballast for the party that we very much need,” Connolly added. “With all due respect to somebody who thinks we don’t need it, when we haven’t had it, Democrats have had disastrous results.”

“I think this is absolutely an insult to us,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). “We’re no better than anybody else, but we stand for election. That has to mean something, that has to stand for something. That’s a lot of baloney.”

In an interview, Pascrell said that he told the same thing to Perez during Tuesday night’s closed-door dinner but didn’t like Perez’s retort.

“I didn’t really get a response, just more of an explanation,” Pascrell said. “I got the impression that this is pretty much a done deal with the options they had come up with, which I find difficult to handle.”

DNC officials said they plan to hold further discussions with members over this issue, although there may not be room for a deal that will satisfy lawmakers.

“Tom and the Rules and Bylaws Committee welcome feedback from members of Congress on ways to make our party more inclusive, increase transparency and empower the grass roots,” said Michael Tyler, the DNC’s press secretary. “We look forward to convening a group of members who have expressed interest in providing further input for the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to consider as they continue their work to reduce the role that unpledged delegates play in our presidential nominating process, a principle on which the full DNC voted to adopt at the March DNC meeting.”

Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), executive director of the early-1980s Hunt Commission, which created superdelegates, said lawmakers were “infuriated” by Perez’s stance, although he’s not sure there’s anything that can be done.

“I think there was a good deal of incredulity and some pretty severe criticism,” Price said. “For a lot of people, this was the first they’d seen of these things.”

Price’s view is that the term “superdelegates” is a key source of friction over the issue.

“We’re delegates. Party leaders are delegates,” he said. “They may or may not be unpledged, but there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t help at all.”

Price said the initial term was the unwieldy “PLEL delegates,” which stands for “Party Leader, Elected Leader delegates.”

“I think there are ways to deal with this that could limit the number of unpledged delegates and could also limit their independent voting strength,” he noted. “I told [Perez] that I was willing to talk with him and work on this in whatever way he desired.”

Price said he hoped to have further interactions with DNC officials on the issue.

