Just months into the tenure of a new party leader, Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee’s financial situation has grown so bleak that top officials have discussed whether they might need to borrow money this year to keep paying the bills.
Fund-raising from major donors — some of whom Mr. Martin has still not spoken with — has slowed sharply. At the same time, he has expanded the party’s financial commitments to every state, and even to far-flung territories like Guam.
Fellow Democrats are grumbling that Mr. Martin, who quietly accepted a raise after taking the post, has been badly distracted by internal battles. So far, they say, he has been unable to help unite his party against Republicans, who control the federal government.
A protracted and public fight with David Hogg, the 25-year-old activist turned D.N.C. vice chair who blindsided party officials with a plan to challenge incumbent Democrats, made things worse. The clash included the leak of embarrassing audio of Mr. Martin questioning his own role and ended in Mr. Hogg’s unceremonious exit this month.
That was soon followed by the news that two of the country’s most influential labor leaders, who represent a combined 3.2 million workers, were also leaving the D.N.C. Both questioned the party’s direction under Mr. Martin.
Rufus Gifford, who served as the finance chairman of Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign and maintains relationships with many top donors, suggested Democrats were being sent the wrong message at a time when they are desperately looking for “fight and leadership.”
“What they are seeing is headline after headline of incompetence and infighting, and I think that is a real problem not just for the D.N.C. but for the larger Democratic brand,” he said. “We need to come together and focus on the issues at hand. That’s got to happen now. And I mean today. And if that can’t happen, we need to shift course.”
This account of Mr. Martin’s tumultuous early tenure is based on interviews with more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers, donors, strategists, D.N.C. members and party officials.
‘Worse than some high school student council drama’
Part of the bumpy beginning appears to be fallout from a bare-knuckled fight for the chairmanship. With the spoils going to the winner as usual, Mr. Martin has pushed to install allies in some key posts — and remove supporters of his vanquished rivals.
“Some of the changes will leave people feeling as if they don’t have a seat at the table,” said Donna Brazile, an influential former party chairwoman and a current D.N.C. member, who did not endorse a candidate or vote in the race for chair. “He has his own inner circle. I’m not in it, and I don’t want to be in it.”
It has not been lost on some Democrats that Mr. Martin arrived at the D.N.C. as the consummate insider, a man who had led both the state party in Minnesota and the association of state party chairs. Yet he has struggled to navigate some internal Democratic coalition politics.
Mr. Martin had offered to keep the two top union leaders — Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — as members of the D.N.C. But he would not renew their plum assignments on the powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee, which controls how the party nominates its presidential candidates.
The Hogg episode also consumed and exasperated party leaders for close to two months.
“This is worse than some high school student council drama,” said Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Martin acknowledged that his early efforts to rebuild the party had been “overshadowed by some of this inside baseball stuff.” But he said he was bringing about meaningful change, pointing to increased investments in all 57 state parties, including the territories and Washington, D.C. He also noted that the D.N.C. was helping organize more than 100 town halls in Republican districts, carrying out an extensive 2024 postmortem and creating a war room to counter President Trump.
“I know there’s a lot of people that are carrying grudges, that are still litigating the campaign that their person didn’t win,” Mr. Martin said. “I am not one of those people. There’s no sense of living in the past. I have no enemies other than Donald Trump and the Republican Party.”
A party low on money
The biggest challenge facing Mr. Martin may now be financial.
Six people briefed on the party’s fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its finances frankly, said big donors — who are an essential part of the party’s funding — had been very slow to give to the party this year as Mr. Martin solicits contributions. His commitment to state parties, which amounts to $1 million in monthly spending, has further strained the finances.
Senior D.N.C. officials have discussed the possibility of borrowing money in the coming months to keep the operations fully funded, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private discussions who insisted on anonymity.
Mr. Martin acknowledged those talks.
“That’s certainly not our plan right now,” he said of tapping into a line of credit, adding, “I don’t know if we’ll have to at this point.” He noted that grass-roots fund-raising had remained strong, and the party said small donations in his first three months were the most under a new chairman.
Still, the party’s total cash reserves shrank by $4 million from January through April, according to the most recent federal records, while the Republican National Committee’s coffers swelled by roughly $29 million. A new report is due this week.
The party out of power often falls behind the one holding the White House. Still, the current financial gap is large: $18 million on hand for the D.N.C. entering May, compared with $67.4 million for the R.N.C. Hefty chunks sit in special accounts that cannot be used for operational costs.
In the first four months of the year, only three people gave $100,000 or more to the D.N.C., according to Federal Election Commission reports. The party said it had received three more six-figure donations in May and June from individuals.
Almost no one questions Mr. Martin’s work ethic. He has traveled to two dozen states as chairman and has energetically sought out money from donors, including this week in New York just days after two friends were assassinated in Minnesota.
“Everything that Ken has done, regardless of the drama that it has caused, has been the right moves,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime D.N.C. member. “He does the work. He rolls up the sleeves.” She and other allies noted that Democrats had won recent down-ballot and special elections, with Mr. Martin campaigning in person in several.
Mr. Martin said he had found that major donors were unhappy across the Democratic ecosystem after last year’s defeats. He has commissioned a significant postmortem review of the 2024 race, which is being overseen by Paul Rivera, a longtime Democratic strategist, and is set to entail as many as 200 interviews. A final report is expected by the end of the summer.
“People invested more money than they ever had before, they dug deeper than they ever had, and they are quite frustrated by the result,” Mr. Martin said of big donors. “They want answers. I don’t take it personally. I wasn’t in charge.”
One recent New York event with Ms. Harris did not bring in as much money as some had hoped, raising roughly $300,000, according to people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to protect relationships. The sum was a fraction of the $1 million price for a single top-end ticket to a New York fund-raiser headlined by Ms. Harris last fall, when she was the nominee.
Even as the party faces a financial crunch, the D.N.C. increased Mr. Martin’s salary this year, federal records show and the party confirmed. His annual salary is now $350,000, up from $300,000.
Mr. Martin said in the interview that his salary had been set by a compensation committee within the party.
Tensions and bitterness
Nothing fractured the party quite like Mr. Hogg’s surprise decision to wade into Democratic primaries to try to oust incumbents. He and Mr. Martin feuded privately and publicly until Mr. Hogg’s ultimate departure.
At one point, Mr. Martin directly called a lawyer, Graham Wilson, who works at the firm of the Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, to express dismay that the firm was also working for Leaders We Deserve, Mr. Hogg’s political action committee. The firm subsequently dropped Leaders We Deserve as a client, according to two people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. A D.N.C. spokeswoman said Mr. Martin had never instructed the law firm to end its relationship with Mr. Hogg’s PAC.
“David Hogg came in and dropped a nuclear bomb on the place,” said James Skoufis, a Democratic state senator in New York and Martin ally who was recently installed on the party’s executive committee. “It’s everyone’s hope and expectation that the drama will be behind us.”
One challenge for Mr. Martin in wooing big contributors is that during the race for D.N.C. chair, his campaign criticized his chief rival, Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, for his ties to some of the party’s largest donors, such as the billionaires Reid Hoffman and Alex Soros. Shortly after Mr. Martin won, he told The New York Times that the onus would be on donors to mend any fences.
Mr. Soros has not heard from Mr. Martin since then, according to a spokesman for the billionaire. Mr. Martin said he had tried to connect with Mr. Hoffman but had “not had a chance to reach out to Alex yet.”
He added that new initiatives he had begun, including a “war room” to press the party’s message and the state investments, would pay long-term dividends. Another early Martin project is a new streaming show on YouTube, “The Daily Blueprint,” which is filmed in a studio with high-end production.
The show has drawn a minuscule audience so far, with some episodes scoring fewer than 1,000 views.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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