Q&A: Ken Martin running for DNC chair

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NewsNation) — After a November election that decidedly did not go the Democrats' way, the party is looking for a new leader to chart a different course. 

The next chair of the Democratic National Committee will be tasked with messaging, helping counter the incoming Trump administration and proving to voters that Democrats are the better choice in future elections.

NewsNation has interviewed all the candidates up for the job. Below is a Q&A conducted with Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer-Labor Party, who is vying for DNC chair. Read Q&As with the other candidates here.

The interview has been edited and paraphrased for clarity and length. 

NewsNation: What went into your decision to run for DNC chair?

Martin: I think in every crisis moment, it’s an opportunity. This is an opportunity to reimagine the DNC, to really think through a critical lens of what it could be and what it should be.

I’ve obviously had a lot of success over my time as the Chair in Minnesota. In 2010 when I came in on the heels of that disastrous election, the Minnesota DFL (Minnesota Democratic–Farmer-Labor Party) had just suffered its worst election loss in 50 years. And what it required me to do was to build a plan. A long-term plan and vision for the Minnesota DFL to help us win again.

In 2016, when I decided on the heels of that disastrous election, to run for vice chair of the DNC to lead our state parties, which I have over the last eight years, you have to remember that the DNC was deeply in debt to the tune of about 70 some odd million dollars. Our data infrastructure was way behind the Republicans. And of course, our state parties had been hollowed out.

I immediately went to work as the president of the ASDC, the Association of State Democratic Committees, to put a plan together to make deep investments in our state parties. And as a result, our state party infrastructure is stronger than it’s ever been.

Running for this position right now is really the opportunity, after a disastrous election cycle, to actually supercharge the DNC. Get them out of DC, as I like to say. Focus on partnering with our 57 state parties (referring to both states and territories) on a plan to win elections in every zip code and up and down the ballot. And so I’m really excited about the opportunity.

NewsNation: What is your message as a candidate for DNC chair?

Martin: Well, let me say what my message is to Democrats. It's time to dust yourself off and get back in the fight. We have to rebuild. We have to reorganize, and, of course, we have to rebrand our party, while at the same time we resist Donald Trump and the extremes and excesses of this administration.

My message to Democrats is we can win again, and we will win again. My message to Americans is that the Democratic Party has always been on your side. We've always fought for working class people, we've always fought for the poor. We've always fought for oppressed and marginalized people, and our party is going to continue to do that. We see you and we hear you.

And part of that means that our party has to be present in communities throughout this country. We have to fight for rural voters, we have to fight for young voters. We have to fight for various constituencies who feel like we're not their champion anymore.

We understand their struggles, and we’re going to center them again, not only in our policy agenda but center them again in our campaigns and elections.

NewsNation: What are your top three priorities if elected DNC chair?

Martin: The top three for me are one, doubling down on our partnership with our 57 state parties. It's really critical that we actually do not backslide on this commitment to building infrastructure throughout the country. For me, making sure that we're investing in a 57-state party strategy that makes sure we're building up and down the ballot all the way from presidential races to gubernatorial races, legislative races, city council, school boards and county board races is absolutely critical.

The second piece of this for me is contesting every race. Our party has ignored local government offices for so long and mainly because we believe that these are nonpartisan offices. The reality is, all of these offices have been politicized over many years now. Take school boards as an example.

We've seen the disastrous results of ignoring those races when the Moms for Liberty crowd and others have taken over school boards and are now banning books and changing curriculum and whitewashing history. The reality is, we can't ignore those important public policy arenas anymore these days.

The third thing that's probably most important to me in this list is actually, and I'll have to use a hockey analogy, because I'm from Minnesota, right? Wayne Gretzky once said, "You have to skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is." And one of the critical pieces of this rebuild right now is developing a 10-year plan.

I believe the DNC and the sister committees in Washington have been too myopically focused on just the upcoming election cycle. We need to start building for not only ‘26 and ‘28 but ‘30 and ‘32 and beyond. And then start making the type of investments that can put us in a position to meet the moment in any one or two tipping point races across the country.

NewsNation: All of the candidates are talking about a 50-state strategy or 57-territory-and-state strategy. What does your version of that strategy look like?

Martin: I've already done it. I'm the only candidate running for chair that actually built the 57-state strategy. Before it was the 50-state strategy under Howard Dean. When I came in in ’16, we actually turbocharged it by deep investments in our state parties. Really rewarding state parties for innovative electoral programming to first of its class voter file and data enhancements to the creation of the democratic data exchange and our voter file cooperative. These are all pieces that we've already done.

For me, the next round of this is actually to expand upon that. I think that the state parties and local party committees are the backbone of the DNC, and we need to make a much greater commitment of our overall budget to building, actually outside of DC, in all of our 57 states.

I also believe one of the things that I'm most proud of is the Red State Fund, which I created to essentially allow and acknowledge that our red states are starting in a deeper hole or a deeper state of disrepair and need additional funds. And I would double down on that as well.

NewsNation: Are there any specific tactics that you’ll use in your role as chair to win?

Martin: I have a whole 10-point plan. One thing that's really important to me is year-round organizing. This is a critical piece of how we move into the future. 

The greatest title that I wear is my first title, which is organizer, because at the core of it, that's who I am, as the chair of the DFL and as a vice chair of the DNC. We need more organizers in this party, and for me, we've got to get out of this transactional model of organizing where we just approach communities, whether it's young voters, or it's rural voters, or it's communities of color a few months before the election, and the first thing we ask those voters is, hey, we need your vote.

I believe that we have to invest in year-round organizing so we build trust and earn trust of those communities through sustained conversation around shared values, around hopes, about their aspirations or dreams for their community, and eventually, over time, we introduce our party and candidates. And the last conversation we have with those communities is asking them to vote for us. It's a much better model. It's a much more durable way to build relationships with communities.

The DC crowd just would rather put more money into TV and make a lot of money for themselves. We're not going to do that anymore. We're going to invest in organizing and make sure, at the end of the day, when we do win elections, that we actually deliver policies that improve people's lives. 

NewsNation: How do you plan on appealing to men of color, particularly Latino men who shifted quite dramatically, as well as Black men who shifted a little bit?

Martin: I've never believed that the role of DNC chair is to be the only spokesperson for the party. And it's really important for us to make sure that our party is elevating the voices of people from that community. Elected officials and party leaders and others from that community, to make sure that we're engaging all parts of this big tent coalition that we have.

And that's true not just for the Latino community, but the African American community and so many other communities, AAPI community, that are part of this coalition. So we have to be better at making sure we're using surrogates who can speak to those communities with authenticity and shared lived experiences.

And two is just acknowledging your own implicit bias in this, right? We all have implicit bias, and understanding that there are just things that I can't understand about specific communities because I don't have that same lived experience.

The third piece for us, though, as party leaders, is to make sure that we're building out a communications environment where we're messaging on all channels where people go to get their information. And this is really critical. 

We now live in a 24/7, 365-day messaging environment and information environment. People are consuming information in different places. Forty percent of Americans say they avoid the news, but they're getting information fed from all sorts of platforms. Gaming platforms, streaming services, podcasts, etc. We have to do a better job of making sure we're in all those channels with trusted messengers and validators.

And the last thing I would say on this is that our party has to look like our coalition as well, meaning that we need party leaders at all levels to reflect the great diversity of our party.