Story highlights The lifelong Democrat has devoted much of his career to civil rights

"We have to get back in rural America," Perez has said

Atlanta (CNN) Just a month after watching Republicans take over the White House and keep their control of Congress, the Democratic Party elected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez as the man to move the party forward.

The Democratic National Committee's first Hispanic chairman won a tight election on the second ballot Saturday and, in a move aimed at at party unification, immediately named runner-up Keith Ellison, a progressive House member from Minnesota, as his deputy.

It's a sorely needed olive branch. The Democrats have been in disarray after the knock-down, drag-out presidential primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the disappointing congressional elections and President Donald Trump's win in November.

Adding to the wounds, former party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned just before the Democratic National Convention in July after hacked emails suggested she and other since-departed DNC officials sought to undermine Sanders in the primary race. The fallout exacerbated tensions between centrist Clinton supporters who backed Perez in the DNC chair race and the progressive Sanders wing, which preferred Ellison.

So, who is the man charged with reversing the downward spiral of the Democratic party?

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