2017 Democratic National Committee chairmanship election

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On February 25, 2017, the Democratic National Committee elected its next chair at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta. It was the first contested DNC chair race since 1985. Interim chair Donna Brazile led the party after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of the 2016 email leak; Brazile did not run for the job. The DNC has 448 members, but 427 voted in the first round, and a simple majority was needed to win. The leading candidates were Tom Perez, the U.S. secretary of labor, and Keith Ellison, a U.S. Representative; other candidates included Sally Boynton Brown, Pete Buttigieg, Jehmu Greene, Jaime Harrison, and Sam Ronan. In the first round, Perez led with about 213.5 votes to Ellison's 200, with Brown at 12, Buttigieg at 1, and Greene at 0.5. After the first round, Greene withdrew and endorsed Perez, while others withdrew and endorsed Ellison. In the second round, with 435 votes cast, Perez won 235 to Ellison's 200, becoming the new DNC chair. Perez then named Ellison as deputy chair, signaling a move toward a broader, fifty-state strategy for the party.