Last year, at a breakfast for Wisconsin’s Democratic National Convention delegates, Sen. Chuck Schumer got onstage and sang the praises of the state’s Democratic Party chair, Ben Wikler.
“This guy is one of the best chairs of a state party. Not just today, but ever,” Schumer said.
Now, Schumer wants Wikler to bring his skills to the national party. Last week, he endorsed Wikler for Democratic National Committee chair, calling him a “tenacious organizer,” a “proven fundraiser” and a “sharp communicator.”
As Democrats continue to reel from November’s losses, Wikler is one of the few party officials who has been hailed as someone who’s doing things right in the aftermath. His supporters fall across the Democratic ideological spectrum: from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to Third Way, from Schumer to progressive Sen. Brian Schatz.
“He’s getting endorsements from progressives and [Third Way’s] Matt Bennett. Which is interesting when his personal politics clearly are more progressive,” a national Democratic strategist supportive of Wikler told NOTUS, calling him a “uniting agent.”
Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at the center-left think tank, said he was swayed by how Wikler handled the campaign of Rebecca Cooke, who ran against but ultimately lost to Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd District.
Cooke, a moderate candidate, fought a brutal primary against a progressive candidate. While the Democratic Party of Wisconsin stayed out of the primary (as they historically do), they immediately rallied support once Cooke won the nomination.
Bennett said that despite Cooke and Wikler’s ideological differences — and that he and Wikler have — “it was clear she believed strongly that Ben had her back.” Cooke lost her race by less than 3 percentage points — ahead of both Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
“He’s interested in winning elections and in candidates doing what they need to do to win elections,” Bennett said. “He’s an honest broker between ideological factions in the party, and I think that’s very important that the next chair be able to do that.”
Wikler’s running for the job on a platform of uniting state and national partners and figuring out a plan for every state on where and how to fight up and down the ballot. Then, hopefully, winning some of those races.
It’s that last part of the plan that Wikler’s critics are skeptical about: Wisconsin flipped from blue to red in 2024. Wikler’s supporters argue that fact should be seen as a relatively tempered failure — the state had the closest presidential margin in the country in a red wave year. Similarly, they argue there’s context to explain other losses, like Cooke losing or Mandela Barnes losing against Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022.
One Democratic strategist, who has reservations about Wikler, said that context is ultimately “a framing of failures. I mean, that is an unforgiving perspective, but politics is a zero-sum game.”
The strategist argued that “if you take a look at [former Maryland Gov.] Martin O’Malley’s leadership of a national priority committee, his record at the DGA is fucking winning in hard places. So at a certain point you count wins and losses, not who’s the most charismatic on national TV.”
His path to the DNC chair is by no means assured. While Wikler is one of two front-runners in a field of eight, Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, has said he’s earned the support of more than 100 members of the DNC. Wikler has yet to reveal his whip count (his campaign did not comment for this story).
Wikler has less national experience than other candidates as well. Martin’s a vice chair of the DNC by way of his position heading the Association of State Democratic Committees. O’Malley, also a candidate, previously chaired the Democratic Governors Association.
Wikler’s supporters, however, credit him for making inroads all over the ballot in unexpected places. He successfully nationalized the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023, cementing nationwide donors for what became the most expensive state judicial election in U.S. history.
The liberal-backed candidate won by double digits, and that justice, who determined ideological control of the court, later provided crucial votes with redistricting. Democrats, led by Wikler, could then leverage that redistricting to break a GOP supermajority in the state’s legislative houses last fall, setting up a new battle to try to take on a majority in one in 2026.
“I’m running for national chair because I think we’re facing a moment of extraordinary threat from a Trump administration,” Wikler told Spectrum News. “If we can build a national party that draws on the same kind of energy and intensity that we built in the state of Wisconsin, we will be able to win a lot more elections and make a difference in people’s lives nationwide.”
Supporters are thrilled by that experience, despite Trump’s win in Wisconsin last November. They said that Wikler’s hard-won progressive successes in a swing state is what the party needs.
“It’s a jump from going from a state to going to go into the nation, and especially going from the demographics that Wikler has been involved with the level of funding that he’s had, it’s a new game,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. But PCCC is “confident in backing Wikler in the new game, because he really understands the concepts that need to be applied. He understands how to use the media; he understands how to fundraise appropriately. He knows the value of a dollar and he knows that it matters where those dollars are coming from.”
Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn, said in a statement to NOTUS that she “witnessed Ben’s strategic brilliance first hand in 2017 at MoveOn” and “he is no doubt qualified and will infuse an adrenaline shot of energy into the party that we desperately need at this moment.” She has endorsed Wikler as well.
Not everyone on the left is sold on him, though. Prior to Wikler even declaring for the race, progressive strategist and former Bernie Sanders speechwriter Jeff Weaver had texted him, per Politico, stating, “I am letting you know that in advance I will be publicly and actively opposing any effort to elevate you to DNC chair.” The New York Times reported Weaver’s issued concerns that Wikler is too tied into major party donors.
His supporters argue that Democrats need money, and a fundraising titan at the helm helps. Organizing is expensive, and it’s a long road to winning back lost seats, never mind claiming brand-new ones. And, they say, he can find not just new donors but new voters, because even if he’s connected to the national circuit, he doesn’t sound like a party official.
“We need to show people, working folks across the county — and this is across race and ethnicity, this is rural areas, small towns, cities, suburbs — that we are fighting for them, and that we mean it. That we know this is not a game,” Wikler said in an interview with Jon Stewart last month.
“The guy just knows how to speak truth. He says it so plainly that it’s hard to push back against, and that’s the kind of authentic voice that we need,” Green said about that interview. “He can do it on every medium. He can be on podcast, on streaming, on cable.”
Green said that Wikler sounds authentic because he is authentic and that carries into the people who work for him, with him and support him.
Wikler “very much so fosters an environment on the team that is excited and is passionate about what they’re doing. And I think that sometimes we discount that in the world of politics, and we’re just here to play the game, but Ben Wikler cares about the people that he’s playing the game for,” Green said.
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.