PHILADELPHIA — Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz faced an angry backlash at a meeting of her home state activists Monday morning as new signs of party discord emerged while Democrats prepared to kick off their national convention.
As she took the podium at a Florida delegation breakfast, the South Florida congresswoman faced boos, which competed with many of the cheers she received.
“If I could ask everybody to settle down,” she told the rowdy crowd as she struggled to maintain order. Moments later she repeated herself: “All right everybody, now settle down. Settle down please.”
Trying to speak over the noise, she acknowledged, “There’s a little bit of interest in my being here, and I appreciate that interest.”
Another official then stepped in to try to restore order.
The uproar was among the signs that the party could face a new round of unwelcome discord as the four-day convention begins.
Two of the Democratic Party’s most popular liberal stars — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — will speak Monday during the first night of the party’s national convention, as organizers try to move the focus of the gathering beyond the leak of a trove of embarrassing emails that forced Wasserman Schultz to resign.
[Complete live coverage of the Democratic National Convention]
But liberal delegates stood ready to shower Wasserman Schultz with boos the moment she steps onto the stage at the convention Monday, according to a top Democrat familiar with their plans.
Volunteers from the Sanders campaign were trying to pressure convention organizers for roll call votes on the presidential and vice presidential nominations, which would stretch out the process and highlight pockets of dissent.
A Clinton campaign official said Monday morning that Warren will take the stage Monday night as the convention’s keynote speaker.
Throughout the first day of the convention, Democrats will try to cast a spotlight on Clinton’s work on behalf of families, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. First lady Michelle Obama will also address the convention Monday night.
Later in the week, the party stalwarts will hear from President Obama, Vice President Biden, and former President Bill Clinton, among others. The convention will culminate Thursday in a speech from Hillary Clinton herself, who is poised to make history as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party.
Sanders’s address will be closely watched following months of bruising competition with Clinton that left many of his supporters deflated and angry with the process. Those hard feelings threatened to boil over again here Monday after the email leak showed party strategists appearing to plot against him during the campaign.
In an interview on MSNBC Monday morning, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said the campaign had not seen a copy of the Vermont senator’s speech.
Looming over the convention is the ugly email episode that prompted Wasserman Schultz to resign.
A group of well-connected delegates spent Sunday coordinating their plan for what they hope would be a defining moment showcasing hundreds of them inside the arena and jeering the party establishment, the Democrat familiar with the plans said, requesting anonymity to discuss his private conversations.
Wasserman Schultz has been told to be prepared for this unwelcome reception, the Democrat added.
Volunteers with the Sanders campaign were at a breakfast for the Maryland delegation Monday morning gathering signatures for a petition calling on the DNC to do a roll call tonight at the convention. The volunteers said the Sanders campaign has staff at every delegation’s breakfast, with a goal of ensuring the most accurate count of delegates.
Democrats were hoping to showcase a smooth, error-free convention that would contrast sharply with last week’s Republican gathering in Cleveland, which was marred by plagiarism and intra-party skirmishes.
Instead, the email leaks and the upheaval at the top ranks of the party threatened to upend Clinton’s plan to paint the Democrats as the party best prepared to lead a divided and anxious country and herself as the leader who can offer an optimistic alternative to Republican nominee Donald Trump.
[Here are the latest, most damaging things in the DNC’s leaked emails]
Wasserman Schultz was forced aside by the release of thousands of emails among party officials that appeared to show coordinated efforts to help Clinton at the expense of her rivals in the Democratic primaries. That undercut claims by the party and the Clinton campaign that the process was open and fair for Sanders.
Veteran party strategist Donna Brazile is taking over as the interim chair, but discussions were underway Sunday about who might be suitable to step in as chair between now and the November election. Among the Democrats mentioned: former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, Rep. Steve Israel of New York and EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock. All are loyal supporters and trusted allies of Clinton.
“It’s best for Hillary Clinton that we have a new chair of the party. We’ll have that with Donna Brazile,” Podesta said on MSNBC.
Republicans, led by Trump, jumped to portray the episode as evidence that the system was rigged for Clinton, whom Trump calls “Crooked Hillary.”
“The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing!” Trump said on Twitter Sunday. “E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!”
Sanders has said he was not surprised by the email revelations. He had been calling for Wasserman Schultz to step down for months.
As Democrats start their convention, Trump will be campaigning in two swing states Monday: Virginia and North Carolina.
A pair of new polls released Monday showed a competitive race heading into the convention. A CNN/ORC survey conducted after the GOP convention showed Trump jumping ahead of Clinton. A CBS News poll showed the contest was effectively tied.
The emails revealed a DNC official apparently discussing how to use Sanders’s religion against him to help Clinton ahead of the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries. In another email, a Clinton campaign lawyer suggested to the DNC how it should respond to claims from the Sanders campaign that it was improperly using a joint fundraising committee with state parties.
The email messages released by hackers were posted Friday on the website WikiLeaks.
The Clinton campaign — and several cybersecurity experts — said the leak was a political ploy carried out by the Russian government to aid in the election of Trump. National security officials are increasingly concerned about possible efforts by Russia to meddle in the election, according to several individuals familiar with the situation.
The Washington Post reported last month that Russian government hackers penetrated the DNC, stealing opposition research about Donald Trump and compromising the party’s email and chat systems.
In addition to the friction with Sanders and his supporters that was revealed in the email hack, donors were upset about the way they were talked about in some of the emails.
In one email exchange in May, national Finance Director Jordan Kaplan and one of his deputies, Alexandra Shapiro, plotted where to seat a major Florida donor, Stephen Bittel, at a DNC fundraiser featuring Obama. Bittel, a real estate mogul in South Florida, appears to have exasperated the officials, the documents suggest.
“He doesn’t sit next to POTUS!” Kaplan wrote.
“Bittel will be sitting in the sh—iest corner I can find,” responded Shapiro, who also referred to donors who had yet to confirm for the event as “clowns.”
Clinton issued a statement in which she announced that Wasserman Schultz would serve as honorary chair of the campaign’s 50-state program as well as continuing as a surrogate nationally and in Florida.
Abby Phillip, Karen Tumulty and Scott Clement in Washington, Philip Rucker, Josh Hicks, Robert Costa, Dan Balz, Lois Romano and David Weigel in Philadelphia, and John Wagner in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
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