A longtime member of the Democratic National Committee is urging the party to establish a process to replace President Biden this summer.
The member, James Zogby, formerly part of the party’s executive committee, made the suggestion in a memo to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chair.
Mr. Zogby, who shared the memo with The New York Times, said in it that many Democrats “are afraid of the uncertainties or even chaos” that could come if Mr. Biden stepped down. But he wrote that the “matter of finding a replacement is no longer speculative,” adding, “It is urgent and it isn’t going to go away.”
As a D.N.C. member for more than three decades who has also advised several presidential campaigns, Mr. Zogby holds limited sway over the party’s current leadership, but he could influence other stalwarts who are scrambling for other alternatives.
The process Mr. Zogby outlines in the memo, however, starts with an unlikely prospect: Mr. Biden announcing that he would drop out of the race. He also suggests that Mr. Biden instruct the party not to simply designate Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee, but instead meet after the Fourth of July to “lay out a one-month campaign schedule to select the party’s nominee.”
Potential candidates would then need to secure the endorsements of 40 current D.N.C. members, including four from each of the party’s four regions, from the roster of roughly 400 members.
“Given the relatively small number of D.N.C. members,” he wrote, “such a process will most likely result in not more than five potential nominees.”
The party would then host two televised events for the candidates to “make their cases before Democratic voters across the country.”
The process would conclude at the party’s August convention in Chicago, Mr. Zogby suggested, where candidates would be formally nominated and votes would be taken among the delegates.
“The excitement generated by this process and the attention it will be given will be a plus for our eventual nominee,” he wrote.
