Dateline Philadelphia — Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not open the Democratic National Convention tonight.
Ms. Wassserman Schultz told the Orlando Sun Sentinel that she had abandoned plans to do so to ensure that the convention opens on a high note.
“I have decided that, in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note, that I am not going to gavel in the convention,” she said.
“I stepped down the other day because I wanted to make sure that having brought us to this momentous day, and to Philadelphia, and planned the convention that is going to be the best one that we’ve ever had in our party’s history, that this needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president.”
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, a House member from Florida, announced Sunday that she would resign as DNC chair at the end of the convention.
Emails released Friday by Wikileaks suggested top DNC aides had worked to help Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination against Bernie Sanders during the primary.
The revelations reopened the controversy surrounding Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s leadership, and led to renewed calls for her to resign.
As of this morning, Ms. Wasserman Schultz planned to gavel in the convention this evening and to speak to delegates, but it appears those plans changed after she was repeatedly booed and interrupted at a breakfast meeting held by her own state’s delegation.
Democrats had feared the optics of opening the convention with the party’s chairwoman taking to the stage to a flurry of boos.
Ed Rendell, a Clinton surrogate and a former DNC chair himself, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning that plans to have Ms. Wasserman Schultz still speak were “wrong” for both her and the party. The show’s host, former Republican lawmaker Joe Scarborough, called it “political malpractice” for Democrats to send her onto the convention stage considering the animosity.
This story originally appeared at www.thehill.com
