Democratic National Committee
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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the official governing body of the U.S. Democratic Party. Its activities include organizing the party’s national convention; drafting its political platform; coordinating campaign strategies for Democratic candidates’ national, state, and local elections; conducting polling and other electoral research; and fundraising. The DNC oversees the activities of state Democratic committees (which support the campaigns of Democratic candidates running for statewide offices) and coordinates its own activities with those of two national legislative committees: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DNC is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The DNC’s approximately 450 members include the chairs and vice chairs of state Democratic parties and more than 200 elected officials apportioned among states based on voting populations, as well as leaders of Democratic associations and other prominent figures.
The Democratic National Committee was founded in 1848 during the Democratic National Convention. Prior to its creation, various state-based committees existed across the country. The national committee established at the convention consisted of 30 members (one from each state) and was headed by a Democratic lawyer and previously unsuccessful congressional candidate, Benjamin F. Hallet of Massachusetts.
In 2016, during the presidential primary contest between former U.S. senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the DNC came under harsh scrutiny following the release by WikiLeaks of nearly 20,000 emails demonstrating that DNC officials overwhelmingly favored Clinton over Sanders, despite the committee’s ostensibly neutral stance. (The emails had been stolen from the DNC’s computer system by Russian hackers.) For example, one group of emails revealed a conversation in which it was suggested that questioning Sanders’s belief in God would serve to negatively affect his voter base. As a result of the scandal, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned before the start of the 2016 Democratic National Convention.