Sen. Bernie Sanders', I-Vt., supporters have criticized the Democratic National Convention for naming multiple people who backed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 to this year's rules committee, The Hill reports.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez has named former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who was a surrogate for the Clinton campaign, and John Podesta, who was Clinton's campaign manager, to sit on the committee. Many Sanders supporters complained in 2016 the party supported Clinton over the senator, who is not a registered Democrat. The Sanders campaign previously tried to have Frank removed from the rules committee in 2016, calling him an "aggressive attack surrogate for the Clinton campaign," but were unsuccessful.
"There's a very small number of appointments of allies to Sen. Sanders," said DNC member Yasmine Taeb from Virginia, who was a delegate for Sanders in 2016.
"The appointments also include individuals that are outright hostile to Bernie Sanders and his supporters," she said. "It's not the message the DNC should be sending to the grassroots right now when we're all working aggressively to defeat the racist in the White House."
Although the Sanders campaign did not respond to The Hill's request for comment, the campaign's national co-chair, Nina Turner, called the appointments "an embarrassment" and a "slap in the face," in an interview with Status Coup.
"If the DNC believes it's going to get away in 2020 with what it did in 2016, it has another thing coming," she added.