On Monday, counsel for the Nevada Democratic Party sent a letter to members of the national party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, filing a formal complaint against the campaign of Bernie Sanders after Saturday’s state convention devolved into chaos.
The three-page letter reads, in part:
“We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sander [sic] Campaign’s penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior – indeed, actual violence – in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats.”
The letter detailed behavior of a small number of Sanders supporters who, angry at a vote rejecting proposed changes to the rules of the day, protested loudly over the course of the day’s proceedings. That anger was heightened by the fact that, despite Sanders’ team having managed to get more people elected to attend the event, more delegates for Hillary Clinton showed up on Saturday. Clinton had about 30 more people in the room — but nearly 60 Sanders delegates were rejected for not being registered Democrats by the May 1 deadline.
This is where the state party pointed fingers directly at Sanders’s campaign.
“The most egregious instance of the Sanders Campaign inciting disruption – and yes, violence – came as the State Convention’s Credentials Committee completed its work. Adam Gillette, part of National Delegate Operations Team for the official Sanders Campaign, drafted and arranged for a member of that committee to attempt to deliver an incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized ‘minority report’ charging that the Credentials Committee had fraudulently denied 64 Sanders delegates their eligibility.”
The party argued that six of those 64 delegates were seated — and that a committee comprised of five Clinton and five Sanders supporters agreed to reject the delegates’ credentials. “[O]ne can imagine the rage occasioned by this inflammatory charge, tossed into the tinderbox of a tense convention hall,” general counsel Bradley Schrager wrote. The scene was so tense that at the end of the event, the casino where it was being held demanded the convention adjourn and law enforcement officials came in to assure order.
Part of the frustration from the state party was clearly that objections to what happened on Saturday, fueled by anger on social media, carried over outside the convention itself. Journalist Jon Ralston documented grafitti on the Democratic Party headquarters in the state disputing the outcome and targeting the chairwoman of the party, Roberta Lange.
Lange also received a number of voicemails and text messages from across the country that were provided to the media. Many included threats of violence; some included Lange’s home address. Her phone number and the address of the party headquarters were distributed on social media.
For weeks, allegations of fraudulent behavior on behalf of the Clinton campaign have been passed around Twitter and Facebook. These stem in part from real voting problems such as were experienced in Arizona primary, where a decrease in polling locations made it much harder for some Democrats to vote.
The escalation by the state party in Nevada, challenging Sanders’ campaign directly for the behavior of a relatively small group of individuals, is a new chapter in disputes between the official Democratic Party and the campaign. Sanders’ campaign sued the Democratic National Committee after he was denied access to the voter file last autumn. That suit was dropped last month.
What the party wants to avoid is a spectacle of anger and frustration on the floor of the convention in Philadelphia. That seems increasingly likely, thanks in part to the fact that the final nomination vote will rely on the votes of superdelegates — a group of unbound voters who the Sanders campaign has alternately pilloried and cajoled. If frustration over rules changes and credentialing can spur death threats and vandalism over a four-delegate difference, imagine what the final nomination vote might engender.
One of the text messages ends, “See you in Philadelphia.”
