The Alabama Democratic Party has allowed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) August 17 deadline to hold new elections for the state party’s chair and vice-chair to pass.

This August 17 deadline was an extension past the 90-day window originally handed down to the state party by the DNC.

This whole saga started August 2018 when Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) led a failed coup of the Alabama Democratic Party during its election of officers, including an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Chairwoman Nancy Worley. Worley was the preferred choice of the Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC), which is known as the “black political caucus” of the state party.

Since then, formal challenges about that election were filed with the DNC, which is still attempting to force the state party to hold a new election of officers and drastically change the structure of the State Democratic Executive Committee in a manner which would include less black Americans.

This has led to significant pushback from leaders within both the state party and the ADC.

Worley has previously referred to the DNC’s call for a new election as “racial” and said “a tiny bit of racism” may be a factor in the Jones- and DNC-led efforts.

However, things really escalated on that front last week.

In an open letter released on Tuesday night, Alabama Democratic Party Secretary Val Bright slammed Jones and the national party for the ongoing attempts to overhaul the state party’s bylaws and leadership structure, saying their “true target” is “blacks.”

Bright’s letter was posted on Facebook by the ADC, which then continued to hit Jones and the DNC via social media in the days leading up to the now-passed Saturday election deadline.

Perhaps the most head-turning ADC post last week came on Thursday when the organization shared a 2018 article from The Root entitled, “Doug Jones and the Democratic Party Just Screwed Black Voters … Again.”

“Don’t start what you can’t end,” the ADC commented on that post, concluding of the Jones/DNC effort, “It is lunacy to divide and conquer.”

The DNC will meet this weekend in San Francisco, CA, where the committee may decide what to do about the Alabama Democratic Party missing this latest election deadline.

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn