Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said Thursday that he doesn’t believe the party will need a second ballot to select its presidential nominee and will avoid what is popularly called a “contested convention.”
A contested convention would occur if no candidate arrives this summer at the convention in Milwaukee with 1,991 delegates — a majority of those available. Although the field has dwindled since Super Tuesday to two leading contenders, it remains possible neither former Vice President Joe Biden nor U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont would accumulate enough delegates to determine the outcome before the convention.
But Perez, a Takoma Park resident who became party leader in 2017, told The Sun that he has long believed “we would not have a second ballot.”
Perez said he has collected headlines in his office from recent election cycles predicting a contested convention, and none has occurred.
“Every cycle it seems in February — and sometimes in March — you all decide to write the inevitable story because it’s a fun story to write: ‘Oh, it’s going to be a brokered convention,’” Perez said. “There was a brokered convention in 1952, and I think since 1952, they’ve been writing, ‘This cycle is going to be a contested convention,’ and it doesn’t turn out to be the case.”
Perez didn’t predict which candidate would win on the first ballot — only that one of them would.
Many Democratic leaders would prefer the contest be wrapped up by the July 13-16 convention so the party can present a unified front in Milwaukee in its effort to defeat Republican President Donald Trump in his bid for a second term.
In a second round of balloting, candidates would lobby delegates to secure their votes. Under party rules, the second round would allow “superdelegates” to participate. They are members of Congress, elected officials and other party insiders who can cast votes for whomever they choose — they’re not bound by the primary results in their home states.
In 2018, the DNC approved a widely supported, Perez-endorsed plan to keep superdelegates from voting on the first convention ballot unless the outcome already was determined. The rules change was supported by Sanders, a 2016 candidate who said minimizing the superdelegates’ role would ensure “that delegates elected by voters in primaries and caucuses will have the primary role in selecting the Democratic Party’s nominee at the 2020 convention."