PHILADELPHIA — As the Democratic National Convention reeled Monday from the fallout of leaked emails in which Democratic staffers privately disparaged presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a top Sanders supporter in Wisconsin acknowledged it could harm efforts to bring Democrats together.
The convention’s kickoff was overshadowed by Sanders supporters’ outrage over the emails, which appear to have been hacked from Democratic National Committee servers and leaked to the public.
Tensions flared during Monday evening’s convention, as some delegates chanted Sanders’ name and booed the party’s presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton.
State Rep. David Bowen was Wisconsin’s only superdelegate to back Sanders’ White House bid after he won the Wisconsin primary.
Speaking Monday morning, Bowen called the email controversy “unfortunate.”
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“It will be harder to get some folks on board now,” Bowen said. “But we have to be honest about the situation and what’s going on, so we can build real unity and get folks on board.”
The Democratic Party’s top national official, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, announced Sunday that she will step down after the convention.
The firestorm threatens to derail Democrats’ attempts to present a united front at their convention, which began Monday and runs through Thursday.
Sanders was set to speak to the convention late Monday night. Bowen, of Milwaukee, said recent events mean Sanders, a senator from Vermont, would need to convince his supporters “we’re better off with a Clinton presidency than a Donald Trump presidency.”
It’s not yet known how the DNC emails were stolen. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said experts have pointed to “Russian state actors” who, Mook said, may have breached DNC computers “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.”
Robert Hansen, a Sanders delegate and chairman of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, called the email controversy “overblown.”
He suggested the exchanges likely were a result of DNC officials “venting” from Sanders and his staffers’ frequent broadsides against the committee.
“After about a year of the Sanders campaign attacking the DNC, it’s not surprising that they had some emails amongst themselves that were negative toward Sanders,” Hansen said.
State Rep. David Bowen, D-Milwaukee
