Bernie Sanders delegates having trouble recruiting VP alternative to Kaine

PHILADELPHIA — A group of Sen. Bernard Sanders’ supporters said Monday they’re trying to recruit a challenger to Sen. Tim Kaine’s selection to be Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, but said they’re having trouble finding anyone willing to buck the Clinton campaign.

“We’ve approached a number of people, and those who want to eat lunch at the White House next year, they run the other way,” said Norman Solomon, a national coordinator for the Bernie Delegates Network.

Network leaders predicted protests will erupt on Democrats’ convention floor, both when Mr. Kaine is announced and when Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz takes the stage to gavel the convention in.

The drama is unsettling for Democrats, who gleefully watched the GOP’s convention last week suffer through the same type of divisions, and who’d hoped to escape it themselves.

The network, a loose self-selecting group of more than 1,200 delegates to the convention, has been surveying members to gauge how far they want to go in protesting Hillary Clinton and other speakers at the convention. They don’t have any firm conclusions, but said anger among Sanders delegates has only grown over the last week.

Mr. Kaine’s selection was part of that, as was the release by Wikileaks of thousands of emails from Democratic National Committee officials, including Ms. Wasserman Schultz, that showed them plotting to derail Mr. Sanders’ campaign.

Mrs. Clinton also didn’t help matters when, minutes after Ms. Wasserman Schultz said she’ll step down from her DNC post at the end of the convention, the Clinton campaign said Ms. Wasserman Schultz will become an honorary chair of the campaign’s state outreach program. She will also be a campaign surrogate.

The Bernie Network called for Mrs. Clinton to cancel Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s new post as a signal that the Clinton campaign understands the seriousness of the emails.

“It kind of all confirms, or reaffirms in the minds of most Bernie delegates, that we were given a raw deal,” said Karen Bernal, one of the leaders of the Sanders coalition within the California delegation to the convention. “The primary was very much rigged from the very beginning to favor Mrs. Clinton.”

Still, the delegates who spoke at a press conference Monday said they expect some Sanders supporters to flee the Democratic Party, but said they themselves will vote for Mrs. Clinton to stop Mr. Trump.