Democratic National Committee prepares to elect a new party chair

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Democrats will take their first tangible step this weekend to drag themselves forward from their 2024 election loss: electing the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. 

The party’s committee members will meet Saturday to vote on a new slate of officers, chief among them the person who will replace outgoing chair Jaime Harrison, the former South Carolina Democratic Party leader whom Joe Biden tapped to helm the party during his time in office.

But while Democrats are set to pick their party’s next chair, they’re not anointing the party’s next leader.

Instead, the incoming DNC chair will take the reins of the fundraising, spending and staffing plans for an organization that spent just shy of $1 billion the last four years. While the national party organization helps set the party’s message and can serve as a home base for a party out of the White House, whoever wins Saturday’s vote will be more in charge of laying groundwork for a Democratic renaissance than leading them back to power himself.

That’s why the chair’s race has become less of a battle for the soul of the party and more a nuanced debate between front-runners who agree on a lot — and understand that the next chair will need to wade into the nitty-gritty of party-building instead of grabbing headlines. 

“What this person will really be tasked with at the end of the day is planning a primary process, making sure that the state parties have the funding and infrastructure they need to be successful, and planning our next convention,” said Matt Corridoni, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked for the DNC and on a past race for DNC chair. “This person is more so a custodian, I think, for the nuts and bolts of operating the party than anything else.”

In a crowded field, two Democratic state party chairs from the Midwest are touting the most support from DNC members: Minnesota’s Ken Martin and Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who ran for president in 2016, is seeking the spot as well.

Martin, 51, has led the party in Minnesota (where it’s called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) since 2011, rising in his more than a decade there to lead the Association of State Democratic Committees and become a DNC vice chair, accruing many allies along the way. He regularly touts how his party-building has coincided with an uninterrupted streak of statewide wins for Democrats since he took over, amid GOP victories in some other Midwestern “blue wall” states. 

Martin has pitched himself as an experienced party hand who understands the balance between party-building and working to repair the party’s brand.

“For the first time ever in American history, the perceptions of the two political parties has changed. The majority of Americans now believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is a party the wealthy and elites. That is a damning indictment on our party,” he said during a forum hosted by MSNBC on Thursday night.

But he argued that victories for Democratic-aligned proposals on ballot measures in red states serve as proof that the party doesn’t need a “wholesale abandonment of our message,” but a shift.

“Anyone saying we need to start over with a new message is wrong,” Martin said. “We’ve got the right message. What we need to do is connect it back with the voters and make them feel again that we’re fighting for the issues that they’re supporting.”

Wikler, 43, became the chair of the Wisconsin Democrats in 2019 after working in leadership at the progressive activist group MoveOn.org. He gained prominence after a string of high-profile victories in the tightly divided swing state: Biden’s 2020 presidential win, Gov. Tony Evers’ 2022 re-election, Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s 2024 re-election despite President Donald Trump’s win in the state, and flipping the state Supreme Court. He has built up permanent campaign infrastructure in the battleground state and touted it as a model for the party nationwide. 

Wikler has based his campaign on not just his success building a party in Wisconsin, but also his energetic approach to fighting back to regain the ground Democrats have lost.

“As we reel with shock at the horrors that Trump is visiting on communities across this country, we need a DNC and a DNC chair who is ready to bring the intensity, the focus and the fury to fight back in this moment when our country is reeling and waiting for leadership,” he said during Thursday’s forum.

“I’ve done this in Wisconsin, a state rigged to be red,” he continued. “I’ve done this in a fight against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. If I’m the DNC chair, we will meet this moment now with a fight it requires.”

The state of the race

Martin has sought to position himself as the front-runner from the moment he jumped in, quickly rolling out endorsements from voting members of the DNC, where Martin has been a fixture for more than a decade. He has much more public support from voting DNC members than the other candidates (almost 200, according to an NBC News count, compared with about 70 for Wikler and 30 for O’Malley). That’s close to the majority of the 448 members needed to win the post.

Wikler said he had secured public and private support from more than 180 DNC members, and he has aimed for some late momentum, rolling out endorsements from seven sitting governors (including potential presidential hopefuls Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Andy Beshear of Kentucky), major unions and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

O’Malley, 62, is the only other candidate to tout significant support from DNC members. His biography is unique compared with the two party leaders, as the only major candidate who has been elected to public office. He ran for president in 2016 after serving as Maryland’s governor, before becoming Biden’s Social Security administrator.

“To define our greatness as a country, I would define it as when we return to our truest selves and act like it again, seeing the dignity of every single person,” O’Malley said Thursday when he addressed the Democratic National Committee’s Poverty Council.

“We come out of this election an election that cries out for change, cries out for new leadership, cries out for battle-tested leadership that can go head-to-head against an administration that is antithetical to everything that you care about, antithetical to our professed belief as a nation and the dignity of every person,” O’Malley continued.

Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has also worked for other Democratic Party leaders, jumped into the race just a few weeks before the election. While his pitch to lead the party is unique among the most notable names in the race, he doesn’t appear to have a groundswell of support from the DNC members who will make the decision.

While the ballot is not technically secret, DNC members’ votes aren’t made public until after the election, giving ample room for members to change their mind. And if no candidate walks into the first ballot with the majority, a multitude of dynamics could determine the eventual winner as the race goes to multiple votes.

Looming over all of it is Trump and the Democratic Party’s diminished standing after a demoralizing presidential election. 

There isn’t much disagreement about the task ahead for the new DNC chair, just over who has the right credentials and approach to help the party put its best foot forward. 

All the major candidates want to implement a “50-state strategy,” a hallmark of former chair Howard Dean’s term that began in 2005 (albeit now with a rhetorical flourish aimed at elevating territorial Democratic Party organizations, too, a “57-state” strategy). All of them emphasize the need to bring their message to new media outlets to reach voters who are less plugged-in.

And all of them have signaled some support for a postmortem look at Democratic spending, after an election where they lost ground almost uniformly despite significantly outspending Republicans. 

While none of the main candidates are running directly against national party leadership or calling for a wholesale reimagining of the party, there’s a near unilateral belief that the party needs to do more to meet the moment.

“I’m gonna start with a show-of-hands question,” MSNBC’s Symone Sanders told the field of chair candidates at Thursday’s forum. Sanders is a former senior adviser to both Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris who is also the host of MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”

“Who thinks that the Democratic Party, the Democrats, have responded sufficiently to Donald Trump’s almost 11, 10 days in office?” she asked.

Not one major candidate raised their hand.