ASSOCIATED PRESS/Seth Wenig Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez speaks in New York on April 3. Perez has worked hard in the past to win back the trust of wary progressives.

The Democratic National Committee’s new finance chair, Chris Korge, affirmed his commitment to neutrality in the presidential primary in response to scrutiny of past comments criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a donation to the campaign of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). At issue are comments Korge has made about Sanders prior to accepting the job at the DNC. He retweeted a message in December calling Sanders “dangerous to the future of the Democratic Party.”

“I have worked tirelessly to help the Democratic Party, and have been proud to support a wide array of Democratic candidates,” Korge said in a statement. “I’m fully committed to the DNC’s neutrality policy and I look forward to raising the funds necessary to help whoever our Democratic nominee is.” DNC Chairman Tom Perez tapped Korge, a South Florida attorney, former Miami-Dade County lobbyist and longtime Democratic donor, to serve in the top fundraising post after Henry Muñoz stepped down earlier this month. The DNC’s voting membership will have the chance to vote on confirming Korge at the party’s August meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In interviews with HuffPost this week, Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders’ 2020 presidential bid, Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb, DNC member James Zogby and DNC member Larry Cohen all called on Korge to clarify that he would leave past antipathy to Sanders behind in his new role. (Kleeb, Zogby and Cohen all endorsed Sanders in 2016 and serve on the board of Our Revolution, the nonprofit that came out of his 2016 bid; as a state party chair, Kleeb will remain neutral during the 2020 primary.) “The DNC, in my conversations with Chairman Perez, has committed to neutrality,” Weaver said hours before Korge released the statement. “Any statement that would commit to it on his part would be an appropriate gesture.” “I hope that when he gets to the DNC he has some of those young people help him find the delete button on his Twitter account,” he added. During the 2016 primary, Korge was a major donor and bundler for Hillary Clinton, and he repeatedly blasted Sanders on social media. For example, in March 2016, Korge tweeted, “The only Bern the middle class will feel from Bernie is the pain from all the tax increases.”

Korge also contributed $2,700 to Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in late January. “The nomination of Chris to be finance chair is concerning. Before the election, I’m sure that we will profess total neutrality in terms of the nominating process and in some ways walk back the comments he’s made about Bernie Sanders,” said Cohen, who emphasized that he was speaking in his capacity as chair of Our Revolution and a member of the DNC representing Washington. An affirmation of neutrality from Korge would be a “start,” Cohen added, but he did not commit to supporting his confirmation at the DNC meeting in August. Ensuring the DNC’s impartiality in the presidential nominating process is a top priority for Sanders allies and other reform-minded Democrats. The DNC is only now emerging from a cloud of suspicion that divided the party for years after the 2016 election. Sanders supporters were furious about both the perceived bias of the presidential nominating process toward Hillary Clinton and the favor the former DNC leadership and staff showed toward Clinton. In particular, Sanders partisans lamented the role of “super-delegates” ― delegates at the presidential nominating convention free to support a candidate of their choosing, regardless of how primary or caucus voters cast ballots in their state. Even if that group of powerful convention delegates, most of whom are members of Congress and other elected officials, would never explicitly thwart the will of primary voters, their early support of Clinton created a sense of inevitability behind her candidacy, critics charged. After a cool reception from many progressives early in his tenure, Perez elicited praise from the Sanders wing of the party for spearheading the passage of reforms in August that stripped super-delegates of much of their power. The new rules bar super-delegates from voting on the first ballot of the convention unless a Democratic candidate has already locked up the nomination with ordinary delegates.

It’s leaps and bounds from where it was in 2015 and ’16. Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman