The race for chair of the Democratic National Committee may eventually include candidates who are well known across the party, but few are likely to have deeper relationships with the committee members who have a vote in the contest than Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic chairman.
Mr. Martin, who announced his candidacy to lead the D.N.C. on Tuesday, has led his state party since 2011 and served as a vice chairman of the national party since 2017. He is also the leader of the association of state Democratic chairs, a body that lobbies for state parties within the national committee.
If Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who entered the contest on Monday, has experience as a candidate for state and national office, Mr. Martin, 51, is a veteran behind-the-scenes operator. He enters the race with 83 endorsements from D.N.C. members, his campaign said, a daunting figure given that the field is not yet set.
Other potential candidates who have had discussions about joining the race include Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman, and Michael Blake, a former New York State Assembly member who served as a party vice chairman.
Jaime Harrison, the current D.N.C. chairman, is not seeking a second term. The election is expected to take place in early 2025.
Mr. Martin said in an interview on Monday that the next party leader would have an opportunity to “reimagine the D.N.C. and focus on some things that they haven’t been doing for some time while also really trying to get at what happened in this last election.”
Here is his conversation with The New York Times, lightly edited and condensed:
Why did Democrats lose the presidential election?
There were just really strong headwinds blowing against us from the very beginning of this election all the way through. And I don’t think you can underestimate that.
It was a change electorate. People were feeling a lot of economic anxiety and certainly, at the end of the day, were going to vote against the party in power. That’s part of it. We saw that around the world. Every major governing party that was facing hyperinflation and up for election either lost vote share or their elections.
Do you think President Biden should not have run initially for a second term?
I think it’s an academic exercise, to be honest with you, and I don’t think it serves anyone well to focus on the past. Because right now we’ve got a big job in front of us to rebuild this party and get ready for the upcoming elections.
I think it’s important to look at those seven battleground states and realize that as decisive as it was around the country, it was much closer in those battleground states than people imagined.
Should there be a public autopsy or investigation run by the D.N.C. into what happened?
I don’t like to call it an autopsy because it would suggest that the Democratic Party is dead, and we’re not dead. We’re still here and we’re fighting.
I do believe there should be a post-election review. We should spend time at the D.N.C., but also with other partners and allies, stakeholder groups on the outside who are deeply invested in this election, and groups from labor to environmental groups to choice groups and others out there who played a significant role in this election. All of us should come to one table and figure out again what worked and what didn’t work. And there should be no sacred cows out there.
What do you think the Democratic Party stands for now?
One thing that is deeply alarming to me, and you’ve probably seen this research, is that for the first time in modern history, the majority of Americans believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor. And that the Democratic Party represents the interests of the wealthy and the elite.
That would suggest we have a huge branding problem, because that is not who our party is. And we’ve got to do a better job of making sure people know that wherever they live, wherever they are from, no matter who they are, we’re fighting for them and we’re their champion in this country.
Did Kamala Harris make the right choice in picking Tim Walz as her running mate?
Absolutely.
Why?
Governor Walz had an amazing story to tell. I think that’s the reason he was picked. And I still think it was the right reason. In fact, after the election, you can see it was clearly the right reason.
People didn’t connect our policy with our candidates and our party, and that’s a different conversation. But clearly Governor Walz had a record to talk about, about actually delivering for Minnesotans and delivering for working people who are feeling squeezed.
You have talked about contesting every race on every ballot. In the last few days, the D.N.C. has laid off about two-thirds of its staff. Do you think the party should contract so much after an election if it plans to have a robust presence in nonpresidential years?
We are in a perpetual campaign. The day after the election is the first day of the next election. There’s no time to rest. And that’s true of the state parties and that is certainly true of the national party.
You’ve talked about Democratic issues being more popular than Democratic candidates. Why do you think that is, and how long do you think it will take to correct that branding problem?
Rome wasn’t built in a day. This has been a problem that’s been happening for some years now and it culminated with this election.
This is not an easy task, rebranding and figuring out how we do that. It’s going to take some time. One of the things we can’t do is, in the short term, take the wrong lessons from this election.
We have to be really deliberate about learning why those voters moved away from us, and that’s going to take time. But, you know, we’ve got some time and we don’t have a lot of time. We have to get right back on the horse because we have big elections in New Jersey and Virginia and throughout the country in 2025.
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