Iowa delegates at the Democratic National Convention had an emotional morning meeting on Wednesday. Ingrid Olson, of Council Bluffs ,stepped up to speak. Olson’s a Bernie Sanders delegate. She offered the Clinton backers in the room some advice: quit telling the Sanders crowd to vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s not Donald Trump. “Please give messages of why we should come together with you,” Olson said. “…We can bring our party together, but it starts with us here and we have to take that home.”
Rebecca Mueller, a Bernie Sanders delegate from Muscatine, was next. “What I want you guys to understand on the Hillary Clinton side, and the party establishment, is that unity is not asking us to remove our Bernie buttons,” Mueller said. As Mueller continued, her voice cracked and she cried. “Do not silence us,” she said. “…You listen first and then you say: ‘What are the barriers that I can bring down?’ And the way that you’re going to bring us together is you listen first.”
Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Andy McGuire was standing right beside Mueller and offered this reply: “We’re going to listen.” Mueller said she’d been listening to convention speakers — and learning things about Hillary Clinton she’d never heard before. “I did not know that she was on the pavement, just like I am, just like all these Bernie delegates out here and so many of the others,” Mueller said. “But I learned that her story is actually so similar — so similar, you guys — to our story.”
Jennifer Gernhart of Fort Dodge, another Sanders delegate, aired another grievance. No Sanders backer was invited to announce Iowa’s results during the convention roll call Tuesday night. Instead, four Clinton backers did it. “We wanted to stand next to you. It was our victory, too,” Gernhart said. “We’re all the same party.” Gernhart suggested the youthful Sanders crowd was being treated like “ignorant children.”
Iowa Democratic Party staffers defended the move to exclude Sanders backers from Iowa’s iconic “roll call” moment. Three of the participants were elected party leaders. The fourth was a Clinton delegate, because Clinton won Iowa’s Caucuses. This debate could be a harbinger of party infighting ahead. Sanders supporters believe they’ve secured a slim majority of slots on the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee.
(Radio Iowa)
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