Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin running for Democratic National Committee top job

Fresh off Democrats’ losses in the presidential election and for control of the U.S. House and Senate, the longtime chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is putting his name forward to lead the Democratic National Committee.

Ken Martin, 51, of Eagan is the second candidate to enter the race, after former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

“We have to focus on building our party all over the country,” Martin said in an interview. He said the Democratic Party needs to continue to be a big tent.

“We have conservative Democrats, centrists; we have progressives, and we have leftists. We have all sorts of Democrats who are fighting for our candidates and for our party, and so the key is to make sure that we continue to be a coalition party, continue to invite voices in and continue to focus all of that energy into helping us win elections throughout this country,” said Martin, who announced his bid for DNC chair Tuesday in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Martin began his career in the 1990s as an intern for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone. He’s served as leader of the state’s Democrats since 2011, making him the longest-serving chairman in the party’s history, and helped grow the DFL into one of the country’s most successful state Democratic parties.

It didn’t happen overnight.

When Martin took over in 2011, the party was deeply in debt. Democrats had lost their majority in the state Senate for the first time in nearly five decades, handing control of both chambers to Republicans. And they had just lost the Eighth Congressional District seat long held by the late Rep. Jim Oberstar.

Over the past decade, he’s helped raise $210 million for the party and landed key Democratic wins, including a trifecta at the State Capitol in 2022.

“I think this model of how we built to win and built to last has been remarkable,” Martin said. “We’ve had a lot of success here that we could replicate on the national stage to help our party in this moment.”

With DNC elections slated for February, Martin will have the next three months to make his case. He already has a coalition of 83 supporters behind him and will soon begin traveling the country to talk about how the DNC can rebrand itself.

A graduate of Eden Prairie High School and the University of Kansas, Martin said he entered politics because he was angry and frustrated with what he saw in politicians. He said Wellstone told him the only way to change an institution is to get involved and shape it from the inside. Martin also serves as vice chair of the DNC and as president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

Martin points out that Democrats lost ground with Latino men, white women and the working class in this fall’s elections. The question of why remains, which he wants to explore heading into 2028.

“One thing we know to be true is that clearly, our brand is broken,” he said.

“It’s not our policy, it’s not our message itself. It is, frankly, the messaging, our tactics, our brand, the fact that we’re not connecting and breaking through to those voters,” Martin continued. “The headwinds from this election were very strongly blown against us from the beginning.”

But Martin doesn’t blame President Joe Biden for not leaving the race sooner or anyone else.

“Placing blame on one person or one campaign is not helpful at this point. We have to really dissect all of this in a postelection review,” he said. “To really get at what were the things we did well, and where did we fall down on the job, so we can fix them the right way.”

He thinks Vice President Kamala Harris was an “exceptional candidate” who did the “improbable” in 107 days. He also doesn’t think Gov. Tim Walz dragged down the ticket in any way. He thinks Walz actually helped it.

“When we talk about missing a boat right now with working class people and not connecting the dots between their own struggles and economic anxiety, the best antidote to that, or messenger to that, was Tim Walz because of his story here in Minnesota,” he said.