The crowded, bitter and at times petty race to chair the Democratic National Committee is coming to a close. Whoever wins will likely have more power over the Democratic Party’s agenda than any of the committee’s most recent leaders.
There’s a deep sense among candidates that with there being no de facto party figurehead at the moment, there will be much less restraint for a new DNC chair to make meaningful change in what many feel is a broken party.
The contest to gain that influence, however, has been rocky. The two candidates who have emerged as frontrunners, Ben Wikler of Wisconsin and Ken Martin of Minnesota, largely lack major policy disagreements. Both have emphasized reaching the working class, wanting to end Citizens United — though without commitment to ban corporate PAC donations — and wanting to audit and reassign the party’s consultant contracts.
But that hasn’t stopped their campaigns, supporters and other candidates from a messy fight over endorsements and transparency.
“One of their applause lines is, ‘We’re going to break up that consultant class and all the vendors,’” former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who is running for chair as well, told reporters following the final DNC candidate forum on Thursday. “OK, sure, if you’re going to get the applause, why don’t you put out who’s funding your campaign? ... Wikler should have done it a long time ago.”
O’Malley has published his donors and Martin has revealed his as well. Wikler said he plans to disclose them late Friday night.
Perceived endorsements have even become toxic and a cause of tension. DNC members arrived at the party’s winter meeting opening reception with signs stating that Biden-Harris aide Jen O’Malley Dillon supports Wikler’s campaign in an attempt to undermine him. Wikler’s campaign denied O’Malley Dillon’s support to NOTUS, saying it was “juvenile, mean and flatly untrue,” while suggesting another candidate may have arranged it.
The race looks tight. Martin claimed last week to have the support of 200 of the 448 voting members, though Wikler and O’Malley’s campaigns quickly questioned that count. On Tuesday, Wikler said his count was at 183 with momentum on his side. In response to Martin’s claim of 200 backers, O’Malley’s campaign said the race isn’t about “inflated and unsubstantiated numbers or tricks and gimmicks,” adding that it’s “disrespectful” to members who are still making up their minds. O’Malley’s is the only other campaign claiming significant support, with the latest figure being around 137 members, his spokesperson told NOTUS on Friday.
“If we added up the DNC members ‘supposedly’ supporting the three top candidates in this race, we’d have more than 500 members voting!” O’Malley posted Wednesday on X.
Another candidate, Quintessa Hathaway, who has received less attention on the campaign trail, is frankly unimpressed with the front-runners.
“I know this looks like the Ken, Ben and O’Malley show, but I don’t think they have what it takes,” Hathaway told NOTUS in the forum spin room on Thursday. “I can go into places and say and do things that I know they would not be comfortable with saying or doing. We need a stronger voice.”
What candidates and voting members can agree on is the opportunity presented by a lack of ties to a White House — or even a future leader of the party.
“The problem of having the White House is that you can’t do anything because the DNC ends up subordinating everything it does to who’s in the White House,” James Zogby, party veteran and candidate for DNC vice chair, told NOTUS. “In this circumstance, we have some freedom to operate, and we ought to take advantage of that freedom and do the right thing.”
Many Democrats said having the DNC’s center be in D.C. was a fatal flaw in messaging that seemed to come from above and lacked connection to people on the ground in their home states.
“In the last election, the messaging from the DNC kept talking about MAGA Republicans,” said Matt Hughes, a North Carolina Democrat running for DNC treasurer. “That didn’t work in North Carolina where there’s a lot of Republican voters that we need in order to win our elections. Our messaging has to be more authentic.”
President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders in the first two weeks of his administration give the DNC a chance to make the public understand the connection between Trump’s actions and their impact on people’s lives, some Democrats at the forum noted.
“What our party needs to do is not tell the story of 10,000 people in the form of statistics,” said David Hogg, candidate for DNC vice chair and board member of March for Our Lives. “We need to tell the story of one person very well.”
The Biden White House stifled initiatives suggested by DNC members to improve workplace morale and benefit the 2024 presidential campaign, several DNC members told NOTUS. Zogby said he and party chair Jaime Harrison wanted to create a commission to address what it means to be a DNC member and a task force to make recommendations for structural changes during the election cycle, but it didn’t get off the ground.
“Strengthening the DNC was a top priority for the President, which is why he invested more resources in it than any president in history,” a Biden campaign alum told NOTUS in response to the notion that Biden stood in the way of the party.
Many DNC members have told NOTUS that they are hoping for a new era in the party apparatus — free of the internal politics of the past administration.
That said, it looks like Kamala Harris is looking for some involvement as she considers her own futures. Harris reportedly met with O’Malley, Wikler and Martin and has vowed to work with whoever wins the chairmanship.
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.