As the Democratic National Committee prepares to lock in Joe Biden as its presidential nominee early, Democratic members of Congress are pushing back.
Rep. Jared Huffman of California has drafted a letter to the DNC calling on the organization to cancel any plans for a “virtual roll call” vote on the nomination, as Politico reported Tuesday. But members are also phoning the DNC directly to stop the vote, two sources told NOTUS.
“They’re calling anyone who will pick up the phone; they’re talking to anyone that will listen,” one source familiar with the outreach said.
The source described some of the members as “up in arms” over the already announced decision to hold a virtual roll call vote ahead of the in-person convention. “It’s like, shouldn’t you be up in arms about JD Vance?” this person said.
The phone calls have reached as high as the chairman of the DNC, Jaime Harrison, two of the sources said. And members have been calling other staff as well.
The rules and bylaws committee of the DNC is scheduled to meet on Friday to decide whether to move forward with a virtual roll call, which would solidify Biden as the nominee weeks before the Democratic National Convention in mid-August.
One of the sources said that if the rules and bylaws committee decides to move forward with the virtual roll call, delegates would decide electronically before Aug. 5 — not July 21, as claimed in the letter circulating among Democrats.
The virtual roll call idea was borne out of concerns that Republicans in Ohio were trying to lock Biden out of the ballot if he wasn’t declared the Democratic nominee before the convention. Ohio actually passed a law requiring certification of the nominee by Aug. 7 to get on the ballot. But the statehouse passed a new law pushing that deadline back to Sept. 6 — weeks after the Democratic convention.
The only problem is the new law doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1, so there are concerns that Republicans may try to challenge Biden’s presence on the ballot.
“So if we did nothing, then from August 7th- September 6th, we would not be in compliance with the OH law,” Harrison wrote in a post on X on Tuesday, in a back-and-forth with Nate Silver.
Silver responded that Harrison was trying to “gaslight people based on a technicality.” But Harrison was having none of it.
“So are we supposed to rely upon the good will of those same people?! Please. Don’t gaslight me!” he said.
“As for timing: Have you heard me say that we are moving on the vote next week? Have you seen me release a calendar on the vote timing? The only thing you have heard us say is that we must get this done by August 5th to give us time to comply by August 7th,” he said.
Harrison did not respond to NOTUS’ requests for comment.
Even if the DNC pushes ahead with its plan to vote by Aug. 5 and not July 21, it almost certainly will upset Democrats in Congress, who feel Biden needs to do more to solidify his status as the nominee.
Democratic lawmakers are increasingly concerned Biden will be a drag on candidates down ballot, and many are hoping he will step aside and that Democrats could choose a new nominee at the convention. But the virtual roll call would greatly complicate that situation.
“It is just so disappointing that instead of being honest with us, instead of working with these concerns and having integrity in their process, that the DNC is doing this power play and just trying to get their way through brute force,” Huffman told NOTUS in an interview on Tuesday.
If Biden were locked in as the nominee on Ohio ballots by Aug. 7, even if Democrats changed their nominee, Biden’s name may appear on the ballot in that state.
In effect, Biden could solidify his status as the nominee just by outlasting the clock. And, Huffman said, members view the DNC’s virtual roll call plan as a ploy.
“It’s just naked gaslighting,” Huffman said.
He added that he was getting two or three texts from members every 15 minutes to be added to the letter and that the letter already has a “very substantial number of signers, and that number is growing.”
Whether anyone at the DNC will care is another matter.
One source familiar with the outreach from lawmakers to the DNC told NOTUS that “members have no control over this.”
“This is not your election; this is not county parties,” the source continued. “This is the DNC. And you’re now tuned into something that has already been decided.”
When NOTUS asked Huffman to respond to that quote, he called it “shocking authoritarianism” and “a lack of consideration for anyone outside of the Praetorian Guard of the DNC.”
“Honestly, it sounds like this small little circle of geniuses that have put us on a losing trajectory, saying we’re going to crash the plane and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.
“The fact that they would patronize dozens of superdelegates in this way, as if we are just idiots that have no voice in the Democratic Party, says everything about where the DNC is right now,” he added.
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Matt Fuller, who is Capitol Hill bureau chief at NOTUS, contributed to this report.