Debbie Wasserman Schultz / Getty Images
When Debbie Wasserman was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, at the age of 26, she arrived with a mission.
The newly minted lawmaker from South Florida was intent on making state statues "gender-neutral," ridding all laws of references to "him" and "his" and "he."
In a Legislature which, at the time in the mid-1990s, still was controlled by Democrats, the young Democrat from South Florida succeeded at a personal agenda in which few freshman-or-woman lawmakers ever succeed at winning.
For this, the Tallahassee press corps fondly dubbed her "Rep. Debbie Wasserperson."
As the Florida Legislature was turning Republican, she served several years in the House and then some in the state Senate. By 2004, she won election to Congress in Florida's 23rd District -- the first Jewish congresswoman elected from Florida.
Married to Steve Schultz, and as a mother of twins, the congressperson revealed her battle with breast cancer in 2009. She is a survivor of a double mastectomy.
As chair of the Democratic National Committee, mother and member of Congress at the same time, Wasserman Schultz has been a passionate spokesperson for both the party and its causes. It was also difficult for anyone who knew her to see how she could support anyone but the candidate who has a strong chance of becoming the first woman elected president of the United States.
It turns out, from the recently revealed email record in a party which has been bedeviled by emails this year, that the party's chair was working just a little too hard for one of the party's candidates, the woman, Hillary Clinton. It only fulfilled Sen. Bernie Sanders' complaint that the party -- of which he really wasn't even a member -- had "rigged" its primaries and caucuses.
So this riven party will convene in Philadelphia this week, and at week's end Wasserman Schultz will step down as chair. She'll still be a member of Congress.
And she'll still be Debbie Wasserperson.