In a recent e-mail sent to several Democratic party staff, a top Democratic National Committee (DNC) official suggested that the party should raise questions about Sanders’ “Jewish heritage” in key primary states.
“It might ma[ke] no difference, but for [Kentucky] and [West Virginia] can we get someone to ask his belief[?]” DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall wrote in an e-mail to several other party officials on May 5, 2016. “Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist.”
“This could make several [percentage] points difference,” Marshall continued. “My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
The very next day, the Sanders publicly accused the DNC of “trying to tip the party convention in Hillary Clinton’s favor.” In December of 2015, the party cut off the Sanders campaign’s access to its own voter data.
Marshall’s e-mail was part of a large trove of DNC messages released by Wikileaks on Friday. The revelation of his suggested attacks on Sanders’ only poured fuel on the fire of accusations that the DNC was anything but neutral during the party’s primary between Sanders, a sitting senator from Vermont and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Marshall, however, was not the only senior DNC official eager to knife Sanders. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz called Sanders’ campaign manager a “damn liar” in a May 17 e-mail.
In response to another e-mail, which contained a news article about Sanders’ desire to appoint a new party chair if he won the nomination, Wasserman Schultz wrote, “This is a silly story. He isn’t going to be president.”
