Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price announced his resignation on Wednesday after a disastrous caucus process resulted in delayed and error-plagued results.
"I believed that we were in a good spot. (I believed that) we were prepared. And we had worked closely with our partners — not just us, but with the DNC and with our tech partners — to make sure we were in a good spot. And I felt that we were,” Price told the Des Moines Register.
Price said that the party’s Central Committee will hold an emergency meeting on Saturday to appoint an interim replacement.
“Whomever is elected will oversee the completion of the recanvass and recount process and begin the process of healing our party,” he said in a letter to the committee.
Price is the former political director of Obama’s 2012 Iowa campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Iowa campaign. He was elected state party chair in July 2017 and was re-elected in 2018.
Price said he quickly realized something was wrong:
Price told the Register he realized something was wrong when results were not posted by 8 pm.
"It was shortly after that that someone came in and said there was — I believe it was characterized as 'a bug in the system,'” Price said. "So that’s when I realized we have a problem. From there on, we were hoping that we could get it unclogged and we could get it fixed and get the results out quicker. But we realized that it wasn’t. So we kept waiting, kept hearing about every 15 minutes that they needed another 15 minutes or so to figure it out. ... But at a certain point we decided we had to call it. That’s when we said we wouldn’t be releasing results that night.”
But Price argued that Iowa should not change to a primary or give up its first spot on the primary calendar.
"I think there’s a lot to unpack," he said. "Obviously, conversations about this will take place, just as they do every four years. And we’ll see how those conversations progress. But I do think that folks saw over the course of this year on the ground that Iowans take this role seriously, that Iowans are not afraid to ask hard questions, and that this has made candidates stronger and better for what comes next."
Iowa still doesn’t have a winner:
The Associated Press and other outlets still haven’t declared a winner in Iowa over errors in the results that the party refuses to address, arguing that doing so would be illegal. Sen. Bernie Sanders received the most votes in Iowa but appeared to trail Pete Buttigieg in state delegate equivalents.
Both Sanders and Buttigieg called for a partial recanvass of more than 100 Iowa precincts.
The recanvassing is expected to begin on Saturday and finish two days later.
