COLOMBIA, SC – The Democratic National Committee is expected to formally elect Jaime Harrison, of South Carolina, as president on Thursday, meaning an early alignment between newly installed president Joe Biden and state party leaders across the country.
The post-inauguration meeting of the party, with the election of a complete cadre of new officers, will take place virtually, reflecting ongoing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Vice presidents on the list include Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth and Texas Congressman Filemon Vela Jr. of Texas.
Harrison – a former president of South Carolina Democrats who proved his worth as a fundraiser in his 2020 challenge to US Senator Lindsey Graham – has already been anointed by Biden, continuing the tradition of acting presidents choose their own party chair.
A graduate of Yale and Georgetown law, Harrison will succeed Tom Perez, who won an unusually controversial election for president in 2017, when Democrats were out of power. After Harrison dropped out of the race to support him, Perez chose him as vice president. Harrison was a key liaison with state party leaders with whom Perez sometimes had difficult relationships.
Harrison, 44, arrives in office with overwhelming support from state party leaders, making his rise a sign of relative unity in a party organization often plagued by internal struggles between Washington’s powerful and state leaders.
“We know that Jaime will commit to continue supporting the state parties and what we all need to do on the ground, to do more than just elect Joe Biden,” said Texas President Gilberto Hinojosa, who saw disappointing local results in November, when Republicans did a better job of training voters, including Latinos in South Texas.
Biden has pledged to support state parties, with his inner circle assuring Democrats that he will not let the infrastructure wither after his victory over President Donald Trump. Many grassroots party leaders remain cautious after the Democrats’ defeat in the vote, even when President Barack Obama, with Biden as his running mate, won two national elections.
During his eight years at the White House, Democrats lost control of the House and Senate, also losing nearly 1,000 legislative seats across the country.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, White House deputy chief of staff and Biden’s campaign manager, pointed to recent Democratic victories in the second round of the Georgia Senate as evidence that Biden will not chair a repeat. Georgia’s Democrats have been building their own infrastructure for years, but DNC aid has spurred efforts toward the presidential election.
To assist in the bidding for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff’s second round, Biden’s team helped to fund at least 50 positions on the team, worked closely with the campaign’s digital teams on voter contact and message strategy. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also made trips to Georgia.
The party building, O’Malley Dillon said in an interview before the inauguration, “is part of who he is.”
Harrison also comes with the support of the majority of the House, Whip Jim Clyburn, of South Carolina, a close ally of Biden and a black member of Congress who said that Harrison’s experiences “prepared him in a unique way for this moment and this mission” . Harrison, who is also black, found his foot in national politics as an important advisor to Clyburn on Capitol Hill and always referred to Clyburn as his “political father”.
The choice is also partly a nod to South Carolina, where black voters make up the majority of the Democratic constituency, and which played an important role in Biden’s victory. After mediocre performances in other contests in the early polls and an important endorsement by Clyburn, Biden won the South’s first primary by more than 30 points, a victory that helped him achieve big wins on Super Tuesday and accumulate the votes needed for the nomination .
“My friend, Jim Clyburn, you brought me back,” said Biden after his victory in South Carolina, acknowledging salvation.
Right for the debate among Democrats in the coming months is the early voting schedule and whether some of the states can be shuffled after an Iowa caucus fiasco. Party leaders said bad decisions, technological failures and poor communications created a mess that humiliated Democrats, undermined confidence in the outcome and threatened to undermine Iowa’s tradition of choosing first.
Some party leaders, including Clyburn, also argued that a more diverse state like South Carolina should be the first to vote.
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Barrow reported from Washington.