Immediately after losing last fall’s presidential election, Democrats were shredded by critics inside and outside the party for failing to connect with working-class people, triggering a debate among pundits and strategists over who is to blame and how to win back blue-collar voters.
But instead of an ideological grudge match or blame game, the race to replace Jaime Harrison as Democratic National Committee chair is dominated by two Midwestern nice guys looking to leverage their relationships and home state records.
One leading candidate, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, has been endorsed by advocacy groups from the party’s left flank such as MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and also by the centrist Third Way.
Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at the George Washington University Graduate School of Management, said the DNC leader race thus far reflects a shift toward pragmatism.
“The fact that the DNC race hasn’t devolved into ideological warfare suggests that party leaders are moving beyond the knee-jerk narratives of the post-election weeks and focusing on what they can control: improving the party’s infrastructure, refining its outreach, and crafting a winning strategy for 2026 and beyond,” he said.
General view of the convention hall during preparations before the start of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug 18, 2024. The DNC program will kick off on Monday with four days of ceremonies.
The DNC chair will be chosen by a small group of 448 party insiders at its winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland on Feb. 1 − the first major task of the party in 2025 after voters gave Donald Trump and his Republican allies control of the White House and Senate this month. Democrats also remain in the minority in the House of Representatives.
“I don’t want to overstate the situation that the party’s in right now, but we’re out of power. I mean, completely out of power,” said Michael Feldman, a former senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore. “There’s a lot of work to do.”
In the shadow of Trump’s return to Washington, Democrats are convening various forums in January to hear from eight candidates who hope to revive the party’s prospects.
It’s a familiar place for liberals, who were exiled from power when the GOP won control of both the presidency and Congress in 2004 and in 2016. What’s different this time, experts say, is Democrats must deal with a fractured media ecosystem, rising disinformation and an electoral realignment that calls for a more nuanced coalition.
Chief among the issues facing the party will be addressing an enthusiasm gap, particularly among younger voters and progressives, which saw the Democratic ticket draw roughly 6.2 million fewer votes compared to 2020.
“A strong chair who can coordinate resources and rally diverse factions of the party could be the difference between a Democratic resurgence and another cycle of missed opportunities,” Burgat said.
Ken v. Ben: frontrunners contrast state records, endorsements
WisDems Chair Ben Wikler speaks during the WisDems 2024 State Convention on June 08, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Most observers believe that Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin and Wikler are in the lead given their current roles give them a network of relationships with party leaders and major donors.
Martin, 51, who claims to have support from more than 100 DNC members, told USA TODAY there are not a lot of political disagreements among the DNC chair competitors.
“What I’ve said, and this is really important, I’m not interested in winning the argument,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in D.C. and there’s others with all their hot takes on what happened in the election, they all want to prove their point, prove how smart they are and they want to play pundit. I have no interest in playing pundit.”
The main contrasts between Martin and Wikler revolve around their respective records, proximity to donors and connections to DNC powerbrokers.
Martin’s supporters brag that Minnesota Democrats haven’t lost a statewide race since he took over in 2011, and how they have advanced a series of progressive policies when twice taking over state government.
In contrast, Wikler’s allies say his relationships give him national gravitas with groups across the party’s ideological spectrum. As the only swing state leader vying for the chair spot, they say he knows how to win close contests.
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin at a Virginia canvassing event
Martin’s camp notes he received endorsements from four full state DNC delegations this week − Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Oklahoma − and also was endorsed by the party chairs of Virginia, Arizona, and Texas.
Wikler, 43, hasn’t shown his cards in terms of a DNC member vote count, but he has major muscle behind him, such as his close ties with billionaire Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder, who has poured millions into the Wisconsin Democratic Party. He also received an endorsement this month from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is the highest-ranking Democrat to publicly support any contender.
In a statement, Schumer called attention to Wikler receiving support from the “full spectrum” of the party and said Wikler was critical in helping hold a Senate seat and flipped 14 state legislative seats.
“Ben has what Democrats need right now—proven results—and that’s why I’m backing Ben,” Schumer said in a Jan. 2 statement.
Those connections make Wikler a formidable candidate, but those same ties could be a liability if the chair race turns into a clash between establishment and more grassroots leaders, who have longstanding grievances about how the DNC operates and being too close to megadonors.
Nina Turner, a former co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said the new chair cannot gloss over the mistakes of 2024. She said that person must be bold enough to reject the use of “dark money” groups, which are non-profits that can spend money on campaigns without disclosing their donors, in Democratic primaries and sever ties with consultants who failed to beat Trump despite the Harris-Walz campaign’s record-breaking fundraising.
“The next chair should take an account of every single consultant that worked on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, and they got to be persona non grata,” she said. “They can’t get no more contracts, because obviously if you can’t win a race with a billion dollars, then you cannot win a race.”
Underdogs make a pitch with endorsements, aggressive calls for change
Former Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley speaks on the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 27, 2016.
Outside of the two Midwestern state chairs, the other candidate are outlining a vision while jockeying for the support of factions of the party with either endorsements or aggressive proposals.
At the top is former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who currently touts sat least 60 DNC members supporting him and this week unveiled support from current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as former Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge, of Ohio, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, who co-chaired the House investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The 61-year-old former Baltimore mayor told USA TODAY in an interview that the party’s need to refocus on economic security should begin with local elected officials, who he says have the most relevant relationship with voters.
“I’ve actually been an elected official,” O’Malley said. “We need to bring our governors and our mayors and our county officials to the table to help us communicate and reconnect with Americans. That’s out of experience, relationships that are forged when one runs for office, and I know how what comes with that.”
If given the reins, O’Malley, who worked as commissioner of the Social Security Administration in the Biden administration until last November, also wants the DNC to be more transparent in its spending and decision-making, in addition to having better online communication. He emphasized the need for a hard review of the 2024 campaign to better understand why working Americans, of “every ethnic background” felt Democrats weren’t speaking to their concerns.
“It’s only when we’re able to show one another − and only when we’re able to show people that gave hard earned money to the party − that we learned from our failings, and that we’re making the changes necessary to win, that will be able to restore the trust we need to win,” O’Malley said.
New York state Sen. James Skoufis
The other DNC chair contenders are mostly considered longshots, such Marianne Williamson, an author and former presidential candidate; Nate Snyder, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official; Quintessa Hathaway, a former Arkansas congressional candidate; and Jason Paul, a Massachusetts attorney.
But among the lesser known candidates, New York state Sen. James Skoufis, who claims to have support from at least 23 DNC members as their first choice, is going on the offensive as a left-leaning populist.
During a Jan. 6 DNC labor council forum where nearly 2,000 people participated in the virtual event, the 37-year-old lawmaker was the aggressor. He called for the DNC to “kick the consultant class to the curb” and took jabs at Wikler for coughing up Wisconsin to Trump while touting how he won a state legislative district by 14% in which the president-elect outpaced Harris by 12%.
Skoufis, who casts himself as an outsider, told USA TODAY the party has a “trust deficit” with working Americans, which was shown when the usually Democratic-leaning firefighters and Teamsters unions skipped endorsing in last year’s presidential election.
If elected, his platform calls for investing heavily in red states and districts; examining the “frayed relationship” with Black and Hispanic voters; and better compensation for DNC staffers.
Rather than an ideological fight, he said, Democrats in 2025 must orient themselves to the culture and language of people working at construction sites and diners as much as professors on Ivy-league college campuses.
“I do believe that we as national Democrats have gotten into this bad habit of being overly academic with our tone that leads some voters to look at us and think that we’re better suited running for university chancellor than we are for public office,” Skoufis told USA TODAY.
“So we do have to sharpen and be more intelligent with our messaging and read the room.”
What’s ahead?
The party is hosting four official forums in focused on each region of the country through January, with two online via its YouTube channel on Jan. 11 and Jan. 23. The other two will be in-person forums hosted in Detroit on Jan. 16 and Washington on Jan. 23 with locations to be announced at a later date.
Mississippi delegate Kelly Jacobs wears friendship bracelets at the United Center, ahead of Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., August 21, 2024.
Party officials say these events will give “grassroots Democrats” a chance to engage the eight contenders for chair, but that the forums “will focus on the questions and concerns of DNC members,” who ultimately make the selection.
In order to prevail, the winner must receive a majority of the members’ votes meaning if a new chair isn’t selected on the first ballot, additional votes will be conducted with the person receiving the fewest votes being eliminated on each preceding ballot.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats reboot with DNC chair race as Trump takes power
