The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Saturday elected Minnesota party leader Ken Martin as its next national chair, in the wake of major setbacks up and down the ballot in the 2024 elections.
The election of Martin is the party’s first formal step to try and rebound from the November elections, in which President Donald Trump recaptured the White House, and Republicans flipped the Senate, held on to their fragile majority in the House and made major gains with working-class, minority and younger voters.
“We have one team, one team, the Democratic Party,” Martin said following his victory. “The fight is for our values. The fight is for working people. The fight right now is against Donald Trump and the billionaires who bought this country.”
Martin, over the past eight years, has served as a DNC vice chair and has led the association of state Democratic Party chairs.
FINAL DNC CHAIR DEBATE ROCKED BY PROTESTS
Minnesota Democratic Party chair Ken Martin (left) and Wisconsin chair Ben Wikler (right), two leading contenders in the Democratic National Committee chair race, at the DNC executive committee meeting, on Dec. 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
He topped Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler by over 100 votes among the 428 DNC members who cast ballots as they gathered for the party’s annual winter meeting, which this year was held at National Harbor in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.
Martin O’Malley, the former two-term Maryland governor and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate who served as commissioner of the Social Security Administration during former President Biden’s last year in office, was a distant third in the voting.
Among the longshot candidates were Faiz Shakir, who ran the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Marianne Williamson, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 and 2024 Democratic presidential nominations. Williamson endorsed Martin on Saturday, ahead of the vote.
The eight candidates in the race were vying to succeed DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, who decided against seeking a second straight four-year term steering the national party committee.
With no clear leader in the party, the next DNC chair could become the de facto face of Democrats from coast to coast and will make major decisions on messaging, strategy, infrastructure and where to spend millions in political contributions.
Candidates for the Democratic National Committee take part in a forum at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., on January 30, 2025. (Fox News Digital/Paul Steinhauser)
“It’s an important opportunity for us to not only refocus the party and what we present to voters, but also an opportunity for us to look at how we internally govern ourselves,” longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told Fox News Digital.
Buckley, a former DNC vice chair who backed Martin, said he’s “very excited about the potential of great reform within the party.” He emphasized that he hoped for “significantly more support for the state parties. That’s going to be a critical step towards our return to majority status.”
In his victory speech, Martin stressed unity and that the party needed “to rebuild our coalition.”
“We need to go on offense,” Martin said. “We’re going to go out there and take this fight to Donald Trump and the Republicans.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who succeeded President Biden last July as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer, spoke with Martin, Wikler and O’Malley in the days ahead of Saturday’s election, Fox News confirmed. But Harris stayed neutral in the vote for party chair.
In a video message to the audience as the vote for chair was being tabulated, Harris said that the DNC has some “hard work ahead.”
But she pledged to be with the party “every step of the way,” which could be a signal of her future political ambitions.
The debate during the three-month DNC campaign sprint mostly focused on the logistics of modern political campaigns, such as media strategy and messaging, fundraising and grassroots organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts. On those nuts-and-bolts issues, the candidates were mostly in agreement that changes are needed to win back blue-collar voters who now support Republicans.
But the final forum included a heavy focus on race and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, issues that appeared to hurt Democrats at the ballot box in November.
A protester is removed by security after heckling at a Democratic National Committee chair election debate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Jan. 30, 2025. (Fox News/Paul Steinhauser)
The forum, moderated and carried live on MSNBC and held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., devolved into chaos early on as a wave of left-wing protesters repeatedly interrupted the primetime event, heckling over concerns of climate change and billionaires’ influence in America’s elections before they were forcibly removed by security.
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The chair election took place as a new national poll spelled more trouble for the Democrats.
Only 31% of respondents in a Quinnipiac University survey conducted over the past week had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, with 57% seeing the party in an unfavorable light.
“This is the highest percentage of voters having an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party since the Quinnipiac University Poll began asking this question,” the survey’s release noted.
Meanwhile, 43% of those questioned had a favorable view of the GOP, with 45% holding an unfavorable opinion, which was the highest favorable opinion for the Republican Party ever in Quinnipiac polling.
