He didn’t offer names.

“I don’t know where it’s all coming from,” Clyburn said in an interview with McClatchy. “But someone came to me over the weekend and told me that (they heard), when I was whip before, I was a figurehead.”

Suggestions that, as the only black member of the leadership team, he was a token and not an effective leader, were tantamount to “the little dog whistles that have been floating around this side for a long time,” Clyburn said.

“What do you mean, I was a figurehead? Nothing could be further from the truth,” he added.