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Before she was forced to step down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee last weekend, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was perhaps the party’s most prominent Jewish leader, emerging a decade ago as the upstart no one in the party could praise enough.
Reaching such political heights made the fall all the more painful, as the Florida congresswoman, 49, was booed in front of her state’s delegation the day before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, a chaotic scene that demonstrated the degree to which she had become a divisive figure in the party.
Her resignation came after leaked emails revealed that she and other DNC insiders appeared to favor Clinton over her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
It couldn’t have been easy for Wasserman Schultz, who had held the post since 2011: The political leader most out front with her Jewishness must now contend with the fact that the most significant setback in her career came in part because an aide had questioned whether Bernie Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win major nominating contests, was Jewish enough.
This week’s events are worlds away from the first day of her second term in Congress, in January 2007, when Wasserman Schultz commandeered one of the larger rooms in the Cannon U.S. House of Representatives Office building for her re-election party.
Snagging the room was a bold move for a sophomore just turned 40 in a congressional pecking order that at times seems like high school, but she could get away with it: She was the third top fundraiser among Democrats that election year, pulling in $15 million, trailing only Reps. Nancy Pelosi of California, the first female speaker in House history, and Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.
Pelosi rewarded Wasserman Schultz with a spot on the powerful Appropriations Committee, and with the title of deputy whip.
But the theme of the party in Cannon was unmistakably Jewish. Staff approached guests to reassure them that the pastrami, imported from a deli in Wasserman Schultz’s South Florida district, was kosher. And the walls were lined with headlines touting a triumph that meant more to her than all the titles Pelosi could confer: Wasserman Schultz, in her freshman term, had passed a law establishing Jewish American Heritage Month.
During her spectacular rise, Wasserman Schultz made her Jewish identity abundantly clear. A typical refrain was that she considered her policies not merely as a lawmaker but as a “Jewish mother.” She took time out to attend Jewish events, appearing in 2011 at a roast for Ira Forman, who had retired as the director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, where she had one of her first political jobs in the early 1990s as a gofer.
At the 2012 convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, she spent an inordinate amount of time working with Jewish Democrats to push back against the inroads that Republicans were making among Florida Jews. The efforts paid off: Those gains showing up in internal polls were rolled back by November, helping President Barack Obama win the key state.
The organized Jewish community sometimes appreciated her attentions and sometimes was wary of them. National Jewish leaders learned to expect her scorching dressing-downs if she did not deem them sufficiently responsive to perceived Republican sins against the Jews.
Still, for Democrats, and Jewish Democrats particularly, she could do little wrong. Wasserman Schultz kept hidden her battle with breast cancer, but starting in 2009 she spoke about it with eloquence and force. She said her health plan as a member of Congress was critical to her care, and she wanted to extend it to all Americans through Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act.
In 2011, Wasserman Schultz achieved a new pinnacle, chairing the DNC. She brought to the job her prodigious fundraising skills and what had been a talent for balancing effective attacks against Republicans with a sympathetic presence.
Turns out, maintaining that balance was harder than it seemed. Her fundraising lagged. This election cycle, the DNC has raised just short of $130 million to the Republican National Committee’s $180 million, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Pressure mounted as differences between Obama and the pro-Israel community sharpened, especially during the debate over the Iran nuclear deal. She became one of the most-watched Democrats as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Obama’s surrogates took opposite sides over a Republican bid to kill the deal. When Wasserman Schultz finally announced her support for the deal, she again said she was doing so “as a Jewish mother” and wept.
Wasserman Schultz then set about contending with an election season in which the conventional wisdom was that Clinton would be the inevitable nominee.
Sanders proved a more formidable candidate than anyone — Sanders included — had anticipated, and tensions soon arose. The senator accused Wasserman Schultz of tilting the scales against him with a debate schedule he said favored Clinton, as well as a reluctance to deliver the assistance that parties must evenly distribute to all candidates.
Wasserman Schultz vigorously denied the accusations — until last week’s dump by WikiLeaks of emails, believed to have been hacked by Russians. There was no smoking gun showing an actual attempt to sabotage Sanders, but there were proposals to do so — the most damaging by Brad Marshall, the campaign’s finance boss, who suggested depicting Sanders as an atheist alienated from his Jewish heritage.
Wasserman Schultz is down but not yet out of the ’16 campaign, although she opted to stay away from the stage just two hours before she was set to open the convention.
She faces a Sanders backer, law professor Tim Canova, in her district in the primary next month. Canova, spurred by Sanders’ enthusiastic endorsement, has raised more money than Wasserman Schultz.