Martin Tears Into Wikler As Dnc Chair’s Race Heats Up

DETROIT — The race for Democratic National Committee chair is finally looking like a race.

Following a sleepy, weekslong opening to the campaign, Ken Martin, the leader of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, ripped into his fellow front-runner, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, at a candidate forum in Detroit on Thursday — questioning the bona fides of his counterpart across the state line.

But even as the race among a stage full of contenders to lead the party out of the wilderness started to heat up, there was little discussion of exactly how Democrats need to change to win back a majority of voters after Donald Trump knocked over the delicate multi-racial coalition that had been holding the party together for decades.

Instead, at the Westin Book Cadillac in downtown Detroit, Democrats cast about for other reasons for their devastating losses — a lack of clear messengers, the decision to spurn Joe Rogan's massive audience, and even the media. But no one wanted to lay a hand on President Joe Biden, who finishes out his only term as the oldest president ever in a few days.

Thursday’s forum, co-hosted by POLITICO, was the second of four meetings scheduled in January ahead of a Feb. 1 DNC chair election, the first major decision confronting Democrats as they seek to rebuild their party in the second Trump era.

Here are five takeaways from the forum:

Martin takes the gloves off

In its opening weeks, the race between Martin and Wikler was all Midwestern nice. But on Thursday, the cold war turned scalding, with Martin going after Wikler all day as an elite who was out of touch with the working class. In a speech ahead of the forum, Martin said he was the only "card-carrying member of a union" in the race, a shot at Wikler. He also said his mother wasn't a college professor, nor was his grandfather an ambassador — both biographical boxes Wikler punches.

Then, during the forum, Martin emphasized he didn't attend an Ivy League school (Wikler went to Harvard), but a state school in Kansas. “I don't rub elbows with billionaires or Hollywood elites,” he said, another contrast with Wikler, who is close to Reid Hoffman, the wealthy venture capitalist, and who has appeared with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show."

Wikler largely ignored Martin's jabs. But their relationship appears to have soured considerably from the time when Wikler visited Martin for something of a tutorial when he first began as Wisconsin party chair.

Even the long shots at the forum were adapting to the new, more combative tone. Marianne Williamson, the twice failed presidential candidate, hopped on the opportunity to hit Wikler, without naming names, for his relationship with Hoffman. “The real problem goes back to the money,” Williamson said. “Reid Hoffman, recognized here as the ‘good billionaire’ because he’s ours, he shares our values.”

Dodging the Biden question

Aside from one brief mention of Biden’s farewell speech on Thursday, it took 40 minutes for the sitting president to come up at all — and only after POLITICO White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns pressed the chair candidates on whether he’s to blame for their 2024 loss. But all the candidates avoided knifing the sitting president, with none conceding Biden should have dropped out earlier than July.

Martin twice said he was not going to engage in this “academic exercise that’s not worth answering.” Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley also chose “not to engage in the question.” And Jason Paul, a long-shot candidate from Connecticut and now living in Massachusetts, placed the blame at the feet of the media, garnering a loud round of applause from the crowd. “Our problem is we trusted you all,” Paul said.

He was taking a page out of the GOP playbook, and he wasn’t the only one. Williamson also jumped in, saying that if she had $1 million, she would take CNN and MSNBC to court.

Trump on the horizon

Trump returns to office in four days, and the Democratic resistance is still teetering.

Martin said the party should “go on offense” against Trump. But Wikler asked explicitly if Democrats should fully oppose or try to work with the incoming president, calling on the party to focus on Trump when he “comes for the things that Americans rely on — when they come for Social Security, when they come for our health care, when they come for education.”

O’Malley said Democrats need to “fight him on the things that people care most about,” like economic issues. And Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security staffer, said that while Democrats need to keep an eye on Trump — they also need to “focus on the local level.”

It’s a marked difference in approach for a party that has spent nearly a decade running explicitly against Trump. And it’s one that reflects the broader recalibration occurring among Democrats across every level of government as they assess the changed political landscape between Trump’s first term and his second.

Still, it’s clear that Trump’s looming return to Washington is weighing heavily on all the candidates.

“The fundamental question is what do we do now?” Wikler asked. “And what we need to do is unite and fight for working people against an administration that is going to try to divide us and rip us all off.”

Blame the messenger, not the message

Democrats have long maintained their problem isn’t what they’re selling — but how they’re selling it. Don’t expect much of a change no matter who’s elected chair. Instead of an overhaul of party priorities, candidates cast themselves as change agents who could spark a party rebrand.

O’Malley, a former presidential candidate, suggested the party lacked enough fight, requiring the next party leader to function more like a general going into battle.

“We need a DNC chair for this wartime footing,” O’Malley said.

There was Martin, accusing the party of relying too heavily on celebrities to do voter outreach. “We have so many … spokespeople out there that we should be tapping into,” Martin said. “Instead of sending celebrities out, we should send workers out to talk to workers.”

And there was Wikler, saying Democrats have to “show people we're on their side,” and that if the party can do that it “can make the Democratic Party the white-hot center of a rebirth of American progress and greatness.”

It’s a diagnosis of the problem that any number of Democratic strategists recoil at, arguing the party has substantive problems that go beyond communications. But at the DNC, it’s still the common refrain.

Blink and it’s 2028

Oh, you thought we were done with the primary calendar drama after 2024? Think again.

One of the DNC’s main tasks ahead of the next presidential cycle is to determine the order of the party’s state primaries. Democrats acquiesced to Biden’s request to elevate South Carolina, which propelled him to the nomination in 2020, to the lead-off spot in 2024, leapfrogging three states that traditionally came before it: Iowa, the first caucus, New Hampshire, the first primary, and Nevada. That set off a prolonged intraparty feud over New Hampshire’s place in the lineup, one that ended with the Granite State going rogue and going first and Biden winning a write-in campaign his allies waged there on his behalf — and with the state’s delegates being seated at the party’s summer convention despite the threat of DNC sanctions.

Now Democrats are girding to fight that battle again. And, as Paul noted, New Hampshire still has a state law that requires it hold its presidential primary a week before any other state: “New Hampshire is going to go first because their state law says it’s going to go first, and they’re just going to do that no matter what we say,” he said, though he said he’d like to see a different lineup afterward.

But the main contenders for chair? Martin didn’t weigh in explicitly about the calendar but said whatever the order is “has to battle test our nominees so we can win.” And Wikler borrowed Martin's line, citing his success as the Wisconsin party chair. “We should have a process that honors our traditions, our coalitions that ensures we battle test our candidates,” Wikler said.