The Working Families Party, a subsidiary of the Democratic Party that pushes progressive policies and candidates, endorsed Sen. Elizabetth Warren for president on Monday—but some rank-and-file members and outside critics have questioned the process as WFP leadership continues to resist sharing vote totals from the decision.
When the party endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 campaign, the totals in that process were released following the vote—a double-standard that has drawn specific scrutiny.
“Publicly releasing the tallies for the committee vote and the member vote is perfectly consistent with what the WFP did in the past,” Sanders spokesman Mike Casca told the Intercept‘s Ryan Grim. “Last I checked, transparency isn’t a radical idea.”
While WFP declined to provide a breakdown of the votes, it did release a statement announcing that “the two highest vote-getters were Senator Warren with 60.91 percent of the vote, and 35.82 percent for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders” in the party’s ranked choice vote.
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It was a decisive win that put Warren over the top on the first ballot. The party was also considering Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), former Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“The WFP’s decision to endorse distinguished it from the majority of progressive groups and unions, which are waiting to make choices between Warren and Sanders, and the several other contenders who lay claim to the progressive mantle in 2020,” The Nation‘s John Nichols wrote.
Not everyone in the party was in favor of the decision, however, with some taking to social media to make their preference for Sanders known.
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