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CNN
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Democrats will choose their next national party chair and leadership team Saturday, closing out a monthslong debate over who is best suited to help the party rebrand and guide it through the next four years of the Trump administration.
Three candidates have emerged as top contenders to lead the Democratic National Committee: Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
The election of new party leaders comes as Democrats have grappled with the most effective way to challenge the torrent of action spurred by the Trump White House, which just this week included the president blaming diversity initiatives for a deadly DC plane collision, a federal funding freeze that was rescinded in less than 48 hours amid widespread backlash, and confirmation hearings for three controversial Cabinet nominees.
Those seeking the party’s top job signaled that, without a national leader, Democrats had not addressed what some called the “chaos” of the last several days with enough force. During their final candidate forum Friday, chair hopefuls were asked to raise their hands if they felt the Democratic Party had responded “sufficiently” to the first nearly two weeks of Trump’s second term. Most candidates – including Martin, Wikler and O’Malley – kept their hands down.
“Right now, our party frankly feels listless. It feels like there’s nobody at the helm,” said David Hogg, a gun control activist running for a DNC at-large vice chair position. “We need leadership, we need a vision for the pathway forward, and that’s one of the most important parts about these elections.”
In addition to choosing the next chair, DNC members will elect seven additional officers: a vice chair for civic engagement and voter participation; a treasurer; a secretary; a national finance chair; and three at-large vice chairs.
To win, a candidate will need a majority of votes cast. There are 450 voting members of the DNC, but the final number needed to win will depend on attendance.
In the days leading up to the election, the three frontrunners released dozens of endorsements from key Democrats, only some of whom are able to vote in the election.
Soon after Martin announced he’d been backed by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement helped former President Joe Biden win the 2020 Democratic primary, Wikler announced he had the support of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
One key Democrat is likely to stay out of the race: former Vice President Kamala Harris. Though the party has spent weeks debating what went wrong during her 2024 presidential campaign, Harris is not expected to endorse a candidate in the race, according to a source familiar.
Harris spoke on the phone this week with the three leading candidates in the race, a person familiar with the discussions told CNN. In the calls, which each lasted about 15 to 20 minutes, the candidates discussed their visions for the party and expressed their gratitude to Harris for her candidacy and commitment to stay involved with the party’s efforts going forward. The former vice president pledged to work closely with the winning candidate as soon as they’re elected, the source said.
Without a Democratic president in the White House, leadership of the party will be fractured over the next four years. And with Democrats in the minority in both the House and Senate, much of the focus on Capitol Hill will be aimed at blocking Trump’s agenda rather than advancing the party’s policy priorities.
The next chair will be tasked with helping guide the party forward as it looks to rebound from stinging losses last November. In addition to fundraising and messaging, the chair will also help steer the 2028 nominating process and create a campaign-in-waiting for the eventual Democratic nominee.
They will also need to unite the committee and address several internal issues, including anger over a wave of layoffs last year, demands for increased transparency around budgets and spending, and frustration with campaign consultants.
State party leaders, particularly in non-battleground states, have pushed chair candidates to vow to invest more in their states and rank-and-file members have called for a more democratized process to access exclusive committees made up of appointees.
“I have never attended a DNC meeting where I left and said, ‘Huh, I learned something,’” Stephanie Campanha Wheaton, one of the Young Democrats of America’s DNC members and a Martin supporter, told CNN. “You show up and you are a pawn, and you nod your head yes to everything that has already been decided upon in committees that you don’t know how people got on.”
At the heart of the leadership elections is a desire to make sense of the party’s 2024 losses and chart a path out of political obscurity. In more than a dozen forums – from the four party-run events to several held by outside groups and voting blocs within the DNC – questions have focused on how to win back young men and working class voters, how to fight disinformation, and how to make better use of the millions for dollars flowing into the party.
“It’s a sign of a healthy party to actually question each other, debate each other, think about the path forward,” said Tory Gavito, a Wikler backer and the president of Way to Win, a women-led donor coalition that co-hosted a DNC forum with the Texas Democratic Party. “And in this debating, the goal is to win.”
Martin, a DNC vice chair who leads the Association of State Democratic Committees and has chaired his state party since 2011, entered the race first and was an early frontrunner thanks to his yearslong relationships with the leaders of various state parties and other DNC members
Joe Salas, a California DNC member backing Martin, said he believed the Minnesota chair understands the important role of local committees. On a personal level, he said Martin was the only high-ranking DNC leader to send him a congratulatory card welcoming him to the DNC when he was elected last year.
“It goes to his point about organizing year-round: you can’t come to somebody a couple of months before an election and ask them to do something,” Salas said. “You have to make deposits before you make withdrawals.”
Wikler experienced a late surge in support fueled by key endorsements from a group of Democratic governors – including DNC voting members Laura Kelly of Kansas, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico – and four large public sector unions, who issued a joint statement.
Many of the DNC voters endorsing him have pointed to his track record in Wisconsin since becoming chair in 2019, including winning a liberal majority on the state Supreme Court that paved the way for more competitive legislative maps.
“We felt like Ben Wikler was the one who could build worker power and expand the party’s base,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, of the joint union endorsement.
In addition to AFT, Wikler was backed by the leaders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, National Education Association and Service Employees International Union. Other unions have split their support among the leading candidates.
O’Malley, meanwhile, has picked up public support from a handful of DNC members and high-profile Democrats such as Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. His critiques of Martin and Wikler have also become more pointed.
The former governor ribbed Wikler for declining to preemptively release a list of donors to his chair campaign ahead of a Friday night FEC deadline and suggested Martin’s support is not as strong as it seems during a gaggle with reporters after a candidate forum Thursday.
“When the totally inevitable front runner, who’s been working at it for five years, shows himself not to be totally inevitable, I think it opens up for a larger debate,” O’Malley said.
Ahead of the vote for chair, no candidate appeared to have enough support to win on the first ballot. Several DNC members said they expect the race will move to additional rounds of voting.
One DNC member who asked not to be named to speak freely, said they believed that support for Wikler and Martin could shift if neither wins on the first ballot.
“If it goes to a second ballot, it could be a complete shake-up,” the DNC member said.
As of Friday, the three leading candidates were claiming to have levels of support that, if added together, would far surpass the number of actual voting members. Wikler’s campaign said he had 183 endorsements and O’Malley’s said he had 137 endorsements, though most of their names have remained private. Martin had released the names of about 200 backers by Friday evening, dozens more than his competitors have made public.
“In the end, we’re going to find out on the first ballot who’s being on the up and up,” another DNC voter said. “Let’s be honest – if a candidate says they’ve got X votes and they come in 20, 30% less than that, the rest of their voters are going to wonder: Were they being sold a bill of goods on how strong their candidacy was?”
