The Democrats have a new face in charge. Ken Martin was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee on Feb. 1. After years as a Minnesota mainstay and leader of the state’s major Democratic wing, Martin will head a party in flux after a 2024 defeat as it works to drum up a unified strategy to combat President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Amid the crowded race for DNC chair, Martin was always considered a frontrunner. This was due to his helping keep Minnesota a Democratic stronghold over the last eight years, even as Republicans made major gains throughout the Midwest in the 2016 and 2024 elections.
Martin’s beginnings
Martin, 51, is a Minneapolis native and began working in politics in high school. He is the “son of a single mother and the first child in his family, he has said, to earn a college degree,” said The New York Times. After college, Martin interned for former Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) in the 1990s before joining the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota’s Democratic Party coalition, and working his way up the ranks.
Martin was elected chair of the DFL in 2011 and also “leads the Association of State Democratic Committees, a body that lobbies for state parties within the national committee,” said the Times. As chair, he has created a “party dedicated to organizing communities, empowering the grassroots, electing progressive candidates, and improving the lives of Minnesotans,” according to his DFL biography.
DNC leadership
Martin was elected DNC chair by earning a majority of 246 of the 428 votes cast — more than “100 votes above the second place finisher, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler,” said NBC News. But while the party is working to coalesce around a new message, the “race hinged more on the candidates’ organizing and fundraising resumes than on their postures regarding the ideological soul of the party.”
In vying for the job, Martin has been “vocal in pointing out that Democrats have a branding problem with voters, arguing many people don’t think Democrats represent the party taking on the priorities of Americans,” said The Hill. While Democrats aim to reorganize themselves ahead of the midterms, one thing Martin will be “charged with overseeing is the 2028 Democratic presidential early primary calendar as leaders across the states have started to weigh in on who should be in the early lineup.”
Martin has also been working to paint himself favorably in the eyes of working-class voters, many of whom shunned Democrats in the last election. He “cast himself as a friend of labor and the son of a single mother who grew up in poverty and can bring the working class back into the party in both red and blue states,” said The Minnesota Star Tribune.
He has also “promised a ‘big tent’ approach and drew endorsements from both left-leaning and more moderate officials,” said the Times. Martin noted during his campaign that Democrats had not lost a statewide race in Minnesota under his leadership. Democrats “have one fight. The fight’s not in here. The fight’s out there,” Martin said in his victory speech. 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.” Democrats “must rebuild” their coalition.