Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, was the prohibitive frontrunner for the entire DNC chair’s race. His message to Trump: “We’re coming.” Rod Lamkey Jr./Associated Press
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Members of the Democratic National Committee elected Ken Martin as the central party body’s new chair on Saturday, picking a seasoned party operative to help lead the party back to power in Washington.
Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, defeated two other major contenders – Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — and a host of more marginal candidates.
He received 246 votes to Wikler’s 144 and O’Malley’s 44.
The outcome was not a surprise: Martin was the frontrunner from the moment he jumped into the race.
In a press conference after the vote was certified, Martin said his message to President Donald Trump was: “We’re coming.”
“This is a new Democratic Party. We’re taking the gloves off,” he continued. “I’ve always viewed my role as a chair of the Democratic Party to take the low road so my candidates and elected officials can take the high road, meaning I’m going to throw a punch.”
In a preview of the kind of punches Martin plans to land, he dinged Trump for focusing on gimmicks, rather than helping people.
“I don’t know how in the hell changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’ makes a difference in people’s lives,” Martin said.
Pressed on whether Senate Democrats should oppose every single one of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, however, Martin demurred. “I have no doubt that every Democratic senator is going to ask the tough questions that the American people deserve answers to, and they’re going to make up their minds based on those conversations,” he said.
Following a race that grew bitter, especially in closed-door conversations, Martin appealed to party unity, but some Wikler supporters were still reeling.
“This is an insider’s game. A perfectly fine longtime insider won, but we missed a transformational leader at a time when we need to show voters Democrats are doing things differently,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which endorsed Wikler. “Everyone wishes Ken the best.”
In a race mostly bereft of major ideological and strategic disagreements, it was occasionally hard to distinguish Martin’s plans for the national party from those of his closest rivals.
All three candidates identified the party’s biggest challenges as a lack of trust with working-class voters and a failure to compete with Republicans in a new, decentralized media environment.
Steering clear of contentious policy debates, diagnoses of what went wrong in the 2024 election and the proper schedule for the 2028 presidential primary, the leading contenders instead focused mostly on technical changes: ordering an after-action report about 2024, investing more in state parties, expanding the DNC’s financial transparency, and building a war room to combat misinformation and disinformation.
But Martin’s election represents a triumph of state party leaders and DNC veterans over senior national Democrats and donors, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman, who had thrown their lot behind Wikler. The latter group saw Wikler as a more innovative organizer whose work in a presidential battleground state better equipped him to lead Democrats during a second Trump term.
“For me, it is life as a true battleground state party chair. It is a different world,” said LaVora Barnes, a Wikler supporter who chairs the Michigan Democratic Party. “What Ben and I go through is what this nation goes through, what this national party needs to be, which is building something on the ground all over the country.”
As outgoing leader of the umbrella group for Democratic state party chairs, however, Martin leveraged deep relationships with state party chairs, officers and other DNC members to cultivate an air of inevitability. He entered the contest in November with nearly 100 commitments from DNC members, and secured more than 200 public commitments from DNC members by the eve of the election – just 26 shy of the number he would have needed to win an outright majority of the 450 DNC members (if every eligible member participated).
Martin’s supporters tended to speak of their longstanding relationships with the Minnesota Democrat, who has spent years campaigning for Democrats in other states and offering guidance.
“He knows what we need, and he knows how to get things done,” said Christale Spain, a Martin supporter who chairs the South Carolina Democratic Party.
Martin has even been in the trenches with state parties against DNC leadership. In 2018, Martin led state parties in a successful revolt against a DNC effort, backed by Hoffman, to consolidate voter data in a new national system that would have stripped state parties’ control of the voter file that is their chief source of revenue.
“Ken was a guy that would step up and fight for us, and he got a lot of crap for that,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party.
Martin also made the case that his record of rebuilding the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as Minnesota Democrats call their party, was more impressive than Wikler’s. After taking over as state party chair in 2011, he erased the party’s outstanding debt and presided over Democratic wins in every single statewide election — even as the number of Minnesota Democrats in the U.S. House dropped from five to four.
Notwithstanding his frontrunner status, Martin, a hardened political operative with roots in the carpenters union, went on the attack against Wikler right away. He dinged Wikler for a record that included high-profile defeats in statewide elections, including Kamala Harris’ loss in his state in November (though Wisconsin was nonetheless closer than any of the six other battleground states). And he implied that Wikler was beholden to party bigwigs and donors like Hoffman.
O’Malley amplified concerns about Wikler’s ties to big donors in late January when he challenged his rivals to join him in disclosing donors to their DNC chair race. Martin agreed right away, but Wikler waited until Friday night, drawing unwanted attention to the topic. Hoffman, a villain for progressives due to his opposition to outgoing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, indeed contributed $250,000 to Wikler’s bid, as did George Soros’ Democracy PAC.
At the same time, some in Wikler’s camp detected a whiff of unsavory deal-making in Martin’s approach. One of Martin’s most important agenda items as chair will be steering the approval of a primary schedule following something of a debacle in 2024.
Former President Joe Biden insisted on making South Carolina the first primary state in the 2024 race, a decision that irked critics who do not want such a conservative state to have such outsize importance in choosing the Democratic nominee. New Hampshire proceeded with its “first-in-the-nation” primary anyway, creating chaos. At the same time, South Carolina’s Democratic electorate is mostly Black, providing racial diversity more representative of the national Democratic base than lily-white New Hampshire.
In addition to Martin’s support from Spain, he is backed by the entire South Carolina DNC delegation and Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), among the most powerful Black elected officials in the country.
While Spain wants South Carolina to remain first on the calendar, she suggested she was not aware of Martin’s preferences on the matter. And of course, while any chair exercises influence over the process, the new primary calendar must be approved first by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee and then by the broader DNC membership.
“He respects the process and will give the party an opportunity to have a fair and transparent process,” Spain said.
Martin likewise denied that he had given assurances to any states about their placement on the calendar, affirming that it is not the chair’s role to put a “thumb on the scale.”
“I’m very proud of the fact that there been no promises made throughout any of this to any of these states on the calendar,” he said.
