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Crowd Boos New DNC Chair at 'Unity Tour' Rally

April 17, 2017

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez received boos on Monday night when a guest speaker suggested that maybe some of the attendees at the DNC "Unity Tour" showed up to see him speak.

After the bruising losses suffered by the party in 2016, Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are traveling across the country on a "Unity Tour" to try to rebuild a grassroots movement and increase activism among voters in purple and red states.

"Regardless of why you showed up today, you showed up for a reason. Something compelled you to find the space and time to be here, and I want you to ask yourself what that reason is," a guest speaker said.

"Maybe it's because you love a certain senator from Vermont," she added.

The crowd erupted in cheers and then starting chanting "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie" multiple times.

She then cut the crowd off and said, "So maybe you came though because you're curious about the new DNC chairman and the future of the Democratic Party."

The crowd booed when she mentioned Perez, which is likely a sign that the DNC will have to bridge the gap among many grassroots activists, who still feel that the DNC is not looking out for their best interests.

It was reported last year after the Democratic primary that top officials at the DNC derided the Sanders campaign during the primary, despite the committee publicly insisting that they were neutral during the primary, according to the New York Times:

WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails sent or received by a handful of top committee officials and provided an online tool to search through them. While WikiLeaks did not reveal the source of the leak, the committee said last month that Russian hackers had penetrated its computer system.

Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.