Friends describe the Florida congresswoman as openly talking just a year ago about one day being speaker and moving up the ranks in Democratic leadership. She regularly doled out checks to rank-and-file members from her PAC and made it obvious she was courting their support.
“It was abundantly clear that’s where she wanted to go,” one Democratic member close to Wasserman Schultz said. “That talk has been considerably quieter.”
Her tenure as DNC chair has been marked by steady stream of viral gaffes or messaging missteps that have led her fellow Democrats to wonder if she’d be able to muster the support for a jump into the Democratic leadership. While most of her colleagues (most of whom declined to go on the record) defended her time as DNC chair, they said her ability to make news (and not the good kind) in her current job have made her future path more challenging.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member