The Democratic National Committee is committing its full resources to recounts in the races for governor in Georgia and governor and U.S. senator in Florida, DNC Chairman Tom Perez tells Newsmax.
Perez spoke to us during a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor Thursday morning.
As he addressed the Georgia contest, final returns showed Republican Brian Kemp had 50.3 percent, Democrat Stacy Abrams had 48.7 percent and Libertarian Ted Metz 0.9 percent. If an expected recount lowers Kemp’s total to beneath 50 percent, there will be a runoff between him and Abrams in December.
“You have not seen the end of the Georgia election,” predicted Perez,”We have people on the ground [and] we will continue to fight there.”
The issue in the contested race, the DNC chief insisted, is a Republican effort “to disenfranchise people of color.” Singling out candidate Kemp in his position as secretary of state, Perez said “the fact is that he stayed there and undermined the [election].”
He added that Kemp, by remaining in his position as the Peach State’s chief elections officer while running for governor, “had an inherent conflict of interest.”
Hours after Perez spoke, the Florida Senate race between Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott went to an automatic recount. With Nelson trailing Scott by 17,000 votes or .22 percent of the vote, a recount was triggered when the margin fellow below .25.
“We have an army of lawyers down there,” Perez said, “I don’t begrudge [pursuing a recount] at all when you have a race that close.”
The difference between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillun is now 39,000 votes or .47 percent of the total.
Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez stopped short of blessing talk by some Democrats of moving for impeachment of President Donald Trump should he get the new acting U.S. Attorney General to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Perez, who spoke at a press breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor, lashed out at the president's decision to name Jeff Sessions' chief of staff Matthew Whitaker as acting Attorney General and thereby putting in his hands the fate of Mueller and his investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
"A person who is acknowledged as a partisan, a person who has written about this in the context of the Mueller investigation, who has criticized the Mueller investigation, has now been put in charge," Perez told us. "It is not hard to figure out what is going on."
Hinting a firing of Mueller by Whitaker might be in the works, the Democratic Party boss voiced his hope "there are Republicans like [South Carolina Sen.] Lindsay Graham who once said there will be heck to pay if they try to do anything to Mueller – this will be a test of whether they are going to live up to that."
Pressed by Newsmax about whether the Democratic-controlled House should pursue Trump's impeachment if Mueller is fired, Perez replied: "That's not what I said. We need to ensure using the oversight process, as some Republicans did express before — and now, who knows that they will say? — they indicated they agreed with the proposition."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.