Why Ken Martin Wants To Lead The Democratic National Committee

Ken Martin, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — as his state’s Democratic Party is known — on Tuesday officially announced his candidacy to head the Democratic National Committee, becoming the second person to unveil their bid to lead Democrats out of the wilderness.

Martin, who also currently serves as a vice chair of the DNC and leads the Association of State Democratic Committees, is running on his record of success in Minnesota. He took over the state party in 2011, turning it from an indebted entity into a fundraising powerhouse that engineered total control of Minnesota government — twice — and has not lost a statewide race on his watch.

“In every crisis, there’s an opportunity,” Martin said. “For me, it’s really about getting the DNC out of D.C. And we build a party to win and to last.”

Martin joins Martin O’Malley, the Social Security Administration commissioner and former Maryland governor, who announced his bid to lead the DNC on Monday. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is expected to join the race as well. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Democratic consultant Chuck Rocha and former DNC Vice Chair Michael Blake are also considering runs. Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor and co-chair of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the White House, has ruled out running, as has New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Martin did not spell out the exact details of how he plans to achieve his goal of shifting the party’s vision from Washington to the states, but he identified two areas that Democrats need to work on.

First, he sees a major deficiency in Democratic engagement in new media spaces, such as with podcasters, social media influencers and niche news sites.

“Most people are not getting their information, their news, from the traditional spaces that the Democratic Party is competing in,” Martin said. “And [GOP President-elect] Donald Trump and the Republicans for the last four years have been spreading misinformation and lies on all of these different platforms that we’re not really engaged in.”

“And even when we were, we were just there for the final few months of the election, and we were bringing in politicians and talking heads, which were not trusted validators and messengers on these platforms,” he added. “So the reality is, we need to be more sophisticated in our tactics and our messaging operation.”

In addition, Martin cited the 2024 general election results as evidence that a critical mass of voters believe Democrats no longer champion the poor and the working class. Polling indeed suggests that voters don’t see Democrats as tribunes of working people. Harris lost among those whose families earn between $30,000 and $100,000 a year, even though Democrat Joe Biden narrowly won them in the 2020 presidential election, according to exit polling.

“That is so surprising to me, because that’s not who our party is. Our party has always fought for working-class people, has always fought for the poor and for the oppressed and the marginalized,” said Martin, who got his start in politics as an intern for Paul Wellstone’s first, populist campaign for the Senate in 1990.

Martin, like O’Malley, is calling for an after-action report on what Democrats got right and what they got wrong in this year’s presidential race. It’s something Martin thinks Democrats should undertake even when they win. But in practice, neither the DNC nor any other central party body conducted a serious postmortem analysis following the party’s crushing defeat in 2016.

Unlike some internal critics who argue that Democrats need to moderate on select cultural issues, or others who believe the party still hasn’t embraced economic populism enough, Martin sees the party’s primary challenge as a “branding problem.” He previewed his perspective in a Monday op-ed for Fox News, noting that Missourians simultaneously voted Republican for every statewide office and approved by referendum paid sick leave, a $15 minimum wage and a constitutional right to abortion.

“I reject the idea that we need a wholesale change in our policies or our message,” he told HuffPost.

When a party occupies the White House, a sitting president typically is given priority over whom to appoint as the chair of their party’s main convening body. Biden selected Jaime Harrison, a political ally from South Carolna and former DNC associate chair, to lead the DNC. Harrison plans to step down upon completion of the new election for chair in early February.

But after a loss in a presidential election, the race for who will lead the party in political exile often becomes a fight over its future direction and its leadership.

The last time there was a competitive race for DNC chair, in 2017, the contest became something of an extension of the ideologically charged 2016 presidential primary between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). With help from former President Barack Obama’s team, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez defeated the more progressive Keith Ellison, then a U.S. representative for Minnesota and now the state’s attorney general. Perez’s election nonetheless led to the eventual disempowerment of superdelegates and near elimination of caucuses in the party’s presidential nominating process.

There is little indication to date that this year’s race for DNC chair will take on such an ideological tenor — though by refusing to campaign as a centrist, Martin, a self-described “pro-labor progressive,” might pick up some support on the left by default. He told HuffPost that he “probably” would not have attended a rally for an anti-abortion Democrat as Ellison and Sanders did in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2017, but emphasized that anti-abortion Democrats and other people outside of the party’s mainstream are welcome in the “big-tent party” he envisions. As an example, he cited his support for former Rep. Collin Peterson, a conservative, anti-abortion Democrat who represented northwestern Minnesota from 1991 to 2021.

Martin is instead likely to be the choice of numerous state party chairs and other DNC members who appreciate his advocacy on behalf of smaller state-level parties within the national structure. He helped lead a fight against the DNC’s takeover of voter data controlled by state parties in 2018, and was critical of Biden’s intervention to change the presidential primary schedule in December 2022.

Martin told HuffPost that he has more than 100 commitments of support from voting DNC members. He would need the votes of 227 members to get a majority of the DNC’s 453-person membership.

Martin, whose Minnesotan accent and soft-spoken demeanor disguise the combative instincts of a hardened political operative, took a preemptive swipe at those who might be seeking the chair role in the hopes of reviving their political career.

Running the DNC or a state party is “the political equivalent of being a fire hydrant — you get pissed on all the time. You get none of the credit when you win, all the blame when you lose,” he said. “So if anyone who’s seeking this job at the DNC or a state party chair’s role is in it for the glory or trying to get a platform for themselves, they’re in for a rude awakening.”

Asked why DNC members should back him over Wikler, who runs an actual swing-state party, Martin responded, “The biggest difference between Ben and I is that I’m winning.”

Wikler, who took office in 2019, presided over Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ reelection in 2022, a liberal takeover of the state Supreme Court in 2023, and the successful defense of Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s seat in 2024. But Wisconsin did not vote for Harris this year, and the state Democratic Party narrowly failed to unseat Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022.

“That’s not a shot at Ben. He’s moved the needle, and he’s a great friend and colleague. And I think he’s done an amazing job in Wisconsin,” Martin said. “But he’s also benefited from a tremendous amount of national investment that other states, including Minnesota, haven’t.”