A vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee says she was disinvited from the party's first presidential primary debate after making a public call for more debates.
Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard tells
The New York Times getting booted from the Tuesday debate in Nevada was a "dangerous" move by the leadership.
"When I first came to Washington, one of the things that I was disappointed about was there's a lot of immaturity and petty gamesmanship that goes on, and it kind of reminds me of how high school teenagers act," Gabbard tells the Times.
"It's very dangerous when we have people in positions of leadership who use their power to try to quiet those who disagree with them. When I signed up to be vice chair of the DNC, no one told me I would be relinquishing my freedom of speech and checking it at the door."
In an appearance on MSNBC last week, Gabbard asserted there ought to be more than the current six DNC-sanctioned debates; her chief of staff got the disinvitation message the next day from an aide to Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC's chairwoman, the Times reports.
Gabbard and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, a fellow DNC vice-chair, also called for more debates in a Facebook post last month, and Democratic candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley
both have called for more face-offs.
An unidentified person close to the committee tells The Times Gabbard wasn't disinvited, but that an aide to Wasserman Schultz wanted to focus on the candidates in the debate and not a "distraction."
Gabbard told the Times she'll watch the Tuesday night debate in her district.
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