Terry McAuliffe refuses to name leader of Democratic Party

Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe refused to name a single leader of his party when pressed by MSNBC’s Katy Tur during an interview Wednesday.

“I think there are many leaders of the Democratic Party,” the Virginia Democrat demurred.

Ms. Tur repeatedly asked for a politician’s name, but Mr. McAuliffe refused, saying, “I’m not going to give you — I’ll say the governors who are leading their states, creating jobs, building infrastructure, building an education system that works.”

“We have to balance our budgets, unlike Washington,” he continued. “They print money, and they still can’t balance a budget. We create jobs. We build infrastructure. We do education. Governors need to lead the way. … But, you know, we need some action out of Washington to help us compete on a global basis. And today, we’re not seeing anything out of Washington. It is broken.”

Ms. Tur complained that she’s asked “a number” of Democrats who the leader of the party is and she has yet to get a straight answer, adding, “What does that say?”

“I don’t think, Katy, there is one person today,” Mr. McAuliffe answered. “I run the state of Virginia today. That’s what I got elected to do, and 66 percent of the state think we’re headed in the right direction. People are happy in Virginia, but what people on the national level — people got to worry about what they got elected to do.”

Mr. McAuliffe’s deflection matches that of many Democrats who have been unwilling or unable to name a leader of the party since Hillary Clinton’s election defeat to President Trump in November. Some House Democrats have called for Nancy Pelosi to step aside as minority leader after Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s special election last month.

A video compilation released by the Washington Free Beacon in late April showed Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Mrs. Pelosi herself, refusing to name one leader of the party.