Seemingly every few weeks, there is a new round of attacks on Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.
However, Chair Martin is doing exactly what my fellow DNC members and I elected him to do: raise record funds, invest in state and local organizing to win elections, and displace Washington, D.C.-based consultants running an ineffective but lucrative business model at the expense of electoral results.
When the voting members of the Democratic National Committee, including myself, met in February of 2025 to elect a new chair following the loss of the White House to Donald Trump, there were many issues on our minds. First, we wanted a party where the voices of long-ignored state and local organizers mattered, rather than serving as a rubber stamp for the decisions of D.C. strategists. Second, we wanted a DNC that invested in the 57 state and territory parties, allowing them to flourish and build infrastructure at the local level. Most importantly, we wanted an end to the DNC’s “business as usual” strategy: raising hundreds of millions of dollars that overwhelmingly went to late-campaign oversaturated paid media in a few battleground districts and states, enriching well-connected consultants but without lasting value to the Democratic Party, its brand, and our voters.
That’s why in last year’s contest DNC members overwhelmingly elected Martin chair on the first ballot. He had spent decades as a successful state party organizer in Minnesota, from his service as an intern for the late Paul Wellstone to his role as a pivotal state party leader during the aughts and teens, helping everyone from Al Gore to Al Franken, Hillary Clinton to Tim Walz. That record gave him credibility and experience as a veteran organizer to create lasting change. Also helping Martin: the mandate for a new direction at the DNC was such that nearly all the leading candidates for chair agreed on sidelining the D.C. consultants in favor of state and local organizing. Martin’s pitch was simply the most credible.
I was among those who were proud to cast our ballots for Martin. He has delivered on his promises, but he is also paying an unfortunate price: hit pieces from those who don’t want any changes to the old, ineffective way of doing things.
The main critique of Martin is that the DNC is in debt compared to the RNC’s nine-figure cash cushion. Never mind that comparing the party’s finances with the White House to those of the party out of power is always unfair, especially with the most corrupt president in history eager to trade policy favors for campaign contributions. You wouldn’t know from reading the headlines that, since Martin’s election, the DNC has raised an astounding $207 million, shattering records for an out-of-power, off-cycle term and twice what the party raised during the comparable cycle of Trump’s first term.
So why is the DNC $2 million in debt, according to reports? There’s some irony there. First, Chair Martin has been making the investments in state and local parties that DNC members elected him to make: over $1.3 million every month to the 57 state and territory parties, to fund voter registration initiatives and election organizers. These investments will not only win races in the short term but pay dividends for decades in robust party building. Second, the DNC absorbed $20 million in campaign debt from Vice President Kamala Harris’s unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign. Without that, the DNC would have an appreciable cash-on-hand figure. Notably, some of Chair Martin’s fiercest critics are among those responsible for Harris’ campaign debts.
This example illustrates the larger point: the media firestorm over the DNC’s finances masks a power struggle between the DC consultant class on the one hand, which makes big money from the old way of doing things regardless of whether they win or lose, and lifelong grassroots activists, on the other, who want to build the party’s languishing infrastructure and brand at every level.
For decades, when a Democrat held the White House, the DNC was functionally run by the Democratic president’s consultants. During periods of Republican control of the Oval Office, leadership of the DNC fell to those closest to Democratic Congressional and Senatorial Campaign Committees. In practice, then, most internal DNC policy (such as scheduling the primary calendar) was organized to protect the interests of the incumbent Democratic President or the party’s federal legislative campaign arms.
But more importantly, the DNC’s spending was directed primarily by short-term campaign thinking: the money the DNC raised would be allocated toward massive TV buys in the closing days of the election. Even as TV advertising becomes far less effective, this approach has not changed much. There’s a reason for that: the media consultants hired by the campaigns get a commission on the ad buys. The more TV bought, the more millions flow into the DC media shops at the expense of state parties or long-term planning.
Conservatives now dominate the ownership and algorithms of social media, cable news, and local news, and the Trump administration is facilitating mergers and acquisitions to grow this advantage further. At the local level, the conservative movement took advantage of Democratic atrophy at the state and local level to steamroll state elections and lock in long-term majorities with gerrymandered maps. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has essentially abandoned year-round organizing in favor of hoarding hundreds of millions to binge on TV ads in the weeks before an election. If it weren’t obvious before that this way of doing business is outmoded, the 2024 election left us no doubt. The Democratic Party must change how it allocates resources.
Fortunately, under Chair Martin, it has. The investments in state and local parties have allowed local Democrats to take full advantage of a favorable political environment, flipping 30 legislative seats in special elections since Trump’s election and picking up 18 more in the regularly scheduled 2025 elections in Virginia and New Jersey, all without a single Republican flip in response. Even where we have lost, Democrats have dramatically overperformed past tallies. State party leaders have repeatedly said that the investments Chair Martin has made have left them much better prepared to organize for elections and win them.
In that light, the same insiders who have attacked Chair Martin over the rollout of the 2024 autopsy should be thankful. Chair Martin sought to avoid inflaming intra-party tensions to focus on the task of defeating Trump, while acknowledging the key lessons learned. The last thing the old guard consultants and advisers should really want to see is a deep dive into why Joe Biden took so long to bow out even when it was abundantly clear he could not win; why Future Forward, the best-funded Harris-aligned Super PAC, curiously chose not to go on the offensive against Trump; why the Harris campaign seemed to lose its nerve after the strong start during the summer of “weird” and “brat”; or who got rich off the campaign’s still-unaccounted-for spending of $1.5 billion over just a few months.
This is not to say that Chair Martin’s tenure has been perfect. Internal leaks about HR incidents suggest that calmer heads and better teamwork are required, and that staff and leadership priorities should be better aligned. More outreach to donors who feel they have not received adequate attention would be wise.
Still, competent Democrats organizing at the local and state level know what we need to do better. We need to invest in year-round media engagement across all platforms to meet voters where they get information now in a 24/7/365 permanent campaign. We need to rebuild investments across all 57 states and territories, efforts that have withered on the vine. These will be essential to expand the map both this cycle and beyond. We need to ensure that our primary calendar for 2028 reflects the entire Democratic coalition as it exists today, and in the states, we must win to save our democracy.
Ken Martin is putting those priorities first, not the financial interests of well-connected D.C.-based consultants. DNC members have his back today—and will continue to assert those priorities in DNC leadership for years to come.
