The News
Democrats elected Minnesota DFL chair Ken Martin to lead their party on Saturday, picking a longtime insider from a purple state over candidates who argued for more radical reform after their November defeats.
“This is a new DNC,” said Martin, 51, who had led Minnesota Democrats for 14 years, and ran an association of fellow state party chairs since 2017. “We’re going to be aggressive about litigating the case against Donald Trump.”
Martin ran on his winning record — Minnesota Republicans haven’t beaten Democrats in a statewide race since he took over — and a focus on the “working class” that had moved away from the party since 2016. He started the race as the favorite, and picked up endorsements from three minor candidates who failed to get traction.
Addressing reporters on Saturday, Martin said that the party would study what
went wrong as it aggressively organized against President Trump and the GOP.
“We know that we lost ground with Latino voters. We know we lost ground with women and younger voters, and, of course, working class households,” he said. “We don’t know the how and why of this, and that’s what I need to get my hands around.”
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David’s view
Martin’s first-ballot victory, with 244.5 votes of the 214.5 needed to win, came hours after Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed his top rival: Wisconsin Democratic chair Ben Wikler. But Martin didn’t see his win as a rebuke of the congressional party.
“This is not personal,” he told Semafor, saying that a top DNC goal would be helping Jeffries win the House in 2026. “I spent the last eight years building infrastructure around the country.”
A longtime progressive activist who took over his state party six years ago, Wikler highlighted his years-long plan to break the GOP’s control of Wisconsin’s courts and legislature, and his record as an organizer at MoveOn early in Donald Trump’s first term.
“This country should not be rigged against you by people who already have everything,” Wikler told DNC members before the vote at a resort hotel in Maryland’s National Harbor.
But Martin, the early front-runner for the job, maintained his lead and benefitted from years of relationships with sometimes beleaguered state parties. And Wikler faced grumbling from some of the other progressives in the race for how he’d run his party and his campaign.
Marianne Williamson, who had run for president in 2020 and 2024, criticized him for removing her and other Biden primary challengers from the 2024 primary ballot. Faiz Shakir, who managed the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign, used his speech to DNC members to note that he didn’t form a PAC to run or hand out “trinkets” to voters, two criticisms that applied to Wikler.
Shakir’s last-minute entry into the race, as a reform candidate who warned that “identity politics” were hurting the Democrats, got broad media attention but little support from DNC members. He won just two votes on Saturday; Wikler won 144.5 votes. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who pitched himself as an “outsider” who had not been there for the party’s Biden-era political mistakes, won just 44 votes.
Eight years ago, after the party’s first defeat to Donald Trump, the race for DNC chair became a sort of rematch between stalwarts who’d backed Hillary Clinton for president and progressive activists who’d supported Bernie Sanders.
This race didn’t break down along the same ideological or factional lines. Old relationships, and worries about large donors undermining the party, mattered more than endorsements from some of the party’s best-known leaders. Defeated on Saturday, they had been impressed by Wikler’s fundraising and messaging, like a well-regarded interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, both seen as potential candidates for the 2028 presidential nomination endorsed him, as did Nancy Pelosi, who called him “the candidate for Chair who most fully meets this moment.”
None appeared at the DNC meeting in person. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sent short video statements, which made no references at all to what had happened since they left office on Jan. 20. But Martin said that he welcomed any more work Harris wanted to do for Democrats.
“I hope she plays a big role,” Martin said. “I really do.”
CORRECTION: This article originally included an anecdote about a “national security” position Martin agreed to create; Wikler, not Martin, agreed to that idea.
Notable
- In the New York Times, Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher call Martin a “low-profile political insider,” at a moment when Democrats are not re-building the sort of mass resistance of the first Trump administration.