Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price on Wednesday resigned from his position after the fiasco that took place following the state's caucuses.
“While it is my desire to stay in this role and see this process through to completion, I do believe it is time for the Iowa Democratic Party to begin looking forward, and my presence in my current role makes that more difficult,” Mr. Price said in a letter to the party. “Therefore, I will resign as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party effective upon the election of my replacement.”
People in both the state party and at the Democratic National Committee have taken issue with Price's leadership and failure to ensure results were reported in a timely fashion.
According to the New York Times, there has been concern about the "appearance of cronyism," especially involving the hotly-contested caucus app:
In a conference call with his central committee two days after the caucuses, Mr. Price was pressed by two members over the appearance of cronyism because of his friendships, dating to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, with a senior adviser to Mr. Buttigieg who is married to the founder of the company that developed the caucus app. (The New York Times was provided with a call-in number for the call.)
“We have seen the pictures of you, Troy, with app developers and people with the Buttigieg campaign, and that’s concerning,” said Holly Brown, a committee member. She told Mr. Price he should not be involved in a planned post-mortem of what went wrong. “We’d like to have you removed from this,” she said.
Judy Downs, the executive director of the Polk County Democrats — who is not on the state central committee — said in an interview that she had been worried about the appearance of cronyism. “Some of the decisions just made it really hard to defend against accusations of cronyism, or conspiracy, frankly,” she said.
Sean Bagniewski, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, which includes Des Moines, said the coziness between state party leaders, vendors and candidates did not originate under Mr. Price. “I think it’s been this way for quite some time,” he said. “It’s kind of like the little families that control petroleum countries. You’ve got access to resources that everybody wants, and you kind of become your own little kingdom of consultants and advisers.”
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