COLLEGE PARK, Md. (July 25, 2016)—Democratic National Committee emails leaked Friday by Wikileaks revealed that party staff was working to undermine Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
The leak brought down party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and threw the first day of the Democratic National Convention into disarray. It also revealed that party staffers had some pretty interesting things to say about Maryland and some of its elected leaders.
Here are the five most interesting things we found in the staff emails—everything from disparaging remarks on a delightful town on the Eastern Shore to openly cheering for one candidate in Maryland's contested Democratic Senate primary.
(We left a message seeking comment with the Democratic Party on the emails included in this story.)
1) A top staffer called Cambridge, Maryland, a "shitty town."
National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan was asked by a colleague in May about his visit to Cambridge, on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
"It was fine. Shitty town and were(sic) only stayed for a few hours. We spent the night in Annapolis."
2) A party official called news of former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's presidential campaign fundraiser "just sad."
After he ended his quixotic bid for the presidency, O'Malley held an "Irish Wake" to raise money to pay down his campaign debt. DNC Mid-Atlantic Finance Director Alexandra Shapiro forwarded a POLITICO article about the event to a colleague, writing, "This is just sad…"
3) The party's top spokesman called either O'Malley or the Baltimore Sun's Washington correspondent a "joke."
Baltimore Sun Washington correspondent John Fritze emailed the DNC requesting information about how moderators determined how many questions to ask each candidate during Democratic primary debates.
In forwarding the message to colleagues to determine how to respond, a staffer noted that Fritze's query came after complaints from O'Malley that he "didn't get enough time" during debates with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Party Communications Director Luis Miranda responded: "Hilarious. What a joke that guy is. You can tell (Fritze) on background that it's entirely up to the networks and leave it at that."
It's unclear whether Miranda was calling Fritze or O'Malley a joke.
4) The DNC tried to use Maryland's Steny Hoyer to combat suggestions that the party was in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
A reporter for The Hill asked the DNC to comment on allegations by former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner that the party mistreated Bernie Sanders during the primaries. Miranda suggested the reporter interview Hoyer to "balance out Nina's perspective." Hoyer, an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton, "could give you a very different perspective," Miranda wrote.
5) A staffer called Rep. Chris Van Hollen's win in the Democratic Senate primary over a fellow Democrat "so beautiful."
A colleague sent Scott Comer, the party's finance chief of staff, a link to a tweet noting that Van Hollen had won a hotly contested battle for the Senate seat left open by the retirement of Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Comer's response from his iPhone: "So beautiful."