Rahm Emanuel? Ben Wikler? Why Democrats Should Pick — Or Pass Over — Potential Contenders For Dnc Chair

Democrats’ first steps to find their way out of the political wilderness following their losses in November will come when they choose a new chair.

Following their last defeat, in 2016, the race for Democratic National Committee chair turned into a proxy battle between progressives and the establishment. Now, Democrats are hoping to sidestep an intra-party feud that could further rupture the party.

But the race for their leader, scheduled for Feb. 1, and decided by 448 committee members, remains wide open.

“This really is an inflection point for the Democratic Party,” said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, a DNC member and incoming chair of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association.

Four candidates are in, and several others are being floated by DNC members. Here, a list of reasons for beleaguered Democrats to pick — or pass over — some of the more frequently mentioned potential candidates for DNC chair.

Ken Martin

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair

Reasons to pick

Martin is the ultimate technician and process operative who knows all the players, having served various leadership roles around the country and the Midwest — including as president of the Association of State Democratic Committees. He already has banked about half of the endorsements he needs to win the race. His candidacy isn’t likely to spark a war within the party.

Reasons to pass

Martin’s candidacy probably wouldn’t instigate the kind of wholesale overhaul of the party’s outlook that some insiders think the party needs. The soft-spoken Midwesterner and vice-chair of the national party since 2017, as well as a co-chair of the Biden-Harris and then Harris-Walz presidential campaigns, doesn’t exactly scream change at a moment when the electorate seems to be asking for it.

Martin O’Malley

Former Social Security Administration and commissioner and Maryland governor

Reasons to pick

O’Malley, who beat Martin to the race, has led the Democratic Governors Association and ran for president in 2016. He boasts relationships across the party.

Reasons to pass

O’Malley is the Dippin’ Dots of Democratic pols — once branded as the product of the future, but always leaving something to be desired in the present. He hasn’t been firmly ensconced in electoral politics in nearly a decade, and it’s not immediately clear why he’s returning now. His last elective win came 14 years ago in 2010 — a time far removed from the current political moment. His 2016 presidential campaign all but ended in the bitter cold — meteorologically and otherwise. When a Midwestern snowstorm dropped 8 inches of snow on Iowa weeks before the caucuses in December of 2015, just one caucus-goer showed. After meeting O’Malley, the man remained uncommitted. O’Malley went on to win less than one percent of the vote before dropping out.

Ben Wikler

Wisconsin Democratic Party chair

Reasons to pick

Of all the Blue Wall states, Wikler’s Wisconsin held down Donald Trump’s margins the most. A former host of a podcast before they mattered in politics, and a one-time senior adviser at MoveOn with the kind of media touch and fundraising network Democrats crave, he’s been hailed as “the best state chair in the country.”

Reasons to pass

Wikler shines on X, where he’s coming up on 200,000 followers, but it’s not clear he would light up cable television or excite national donors. Like his fellow Midwesterner Martin, he’s seen as a process guy. In some ways, he might be the ideal executive director if the party moves toward a model where the chair is more of a figurehead messenger and fundraiser, and someone like Wikler is left to deal with blocking and tackling.

James Skoufis

New York state senator

Reasons to pick

The field’s self-described “outsider,” Skoufis, 37, hails from a district Trump won. His home county of Orange was one of the 46 New York counties the president-elect took — and where Skoufis won by 13 points in 2023. He’s never lost an election.

Reasons to pass

He has held no party leadership positions before — nationally or otherwise.

Michael Blake

former New York assemblyman

Reasons to pick

The former New York assemblyman and DNC vice chair is an ambitious political player, like fellow New Yorker former Rep. Max Rose, who is also weighing a potential bid. Blake, the son of Jamaican immigrants, would bring some diversity to what is largely a white field. And he has raised his hand for the job ….

Reasons to pass

It’s just not clear anyone is calling on him. At virtually the same time he is pursuing the DNC role, Blake announced a bid for New York City mayor — a gambit viewed by many within the party as fundamentally unserious. “NYC. DNC. A New Day is coming,” he posted to X. It did not receive even half a dozen reposts.

Rahm Emanuel

Outgoing U.S. ambassador to Japan

Reasons to pick

David Axelrod has floated his old Obama ally as “the most skillful, political kind of infighter in the Democratic Party. … He’s been a member of Congress, he’s been White House chief of staff, he’s been the mayor of Chicago. Now, he’s been ambassador to Japan, and he ran, in 2005 and [2006], the campaign to take back the House,” Axelrod said on his podcast Hacks on Tap. It’s true: No contender brawls in real life or on cable television like Emanuel. He knows how to hit up national donors for money. He knows how to bring the party back to the center. Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times he will soon return home and “talk and listen to folks at home about [the] best way to serve and build what we care about.”

Reasons to pass

Emanuel has been a figure in the Democratic Party for some 40 years — and party insiders wanting a change candidate might not want him.

Sherrod Brown

U.S. senator from Ohio

Reasons to pick

If Democrats have lost touch with broad swaths of the middle of the country, then there is perhaps no one better to fix that perception than the outgoing senator from Ohio, who lost a closely fought contest to car dealer Bernie Moreno. His national fundraising network is unrivaled by the field: He and his allies raised $83.3 million, more than his opponent. He has a Rust Belt brand other Democratic candidates can draft off of. And Brown also has an unmatched outside-the-Beltway authenticity that makes him equally comfortable on a picket line as in a Washington greenroom.

Reasons to pass

Coming off a running-on-empty Senate bid, it’s not clear whether Brown has the appetite — or wherewithal — for what promises to be a bruising political moment in a second Trump term. It isn’t clear his proponents in the party will be able to persuade him to get into the race.

Faiz Shakir

2020 Bernie Sanders campaign manager

Reasons to pick

Like Chuck Rocha, the Democratic strategist and self-described “non-college-educated Mexican redneck,” who is also weighing a DNC bid, Shakir would bring a fresh perspective to a party thirsting for it. The clear progressive in the field, he also maintains more respect from within the party’s more moderate strain than some other Sanders alumni.

Reasons to pass

Shakir — not a marquee cable booking or donor draw — may ultimately be better suited as an executive director or CEO in the party organization.

Mallory McMorrow

Michigan state senator

Reasons to pick

Democrats lost the culture wars this election cycle to Republicans, who slammed them with millions of dollars worth of ads on anti-transgender rights issues in the battleground states. No one has the experience of disarming such attacks like McMorrow, who rose to prominence in a battleground Democrats lost in 2024 after diffusing a Republican rivals’ unfounded criticism in 2022 that she was engaged in “grooming and sexualizing children” with a 4:43 minute speech in the well of the Michigan Senate. Off that speech, she built the beginnings of a national fundraising network and platform and raised north of $1 million to flip the chamber to Democratic control.

Reasons to pass

The darkest of dark horse candidates for the role, McMorrow is a veteran of MSNBC, and her first book Hate Won't Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It comes out next March, not long after the DNC chair election — which means that if she launches a bid, it could be, in part, about elevating her national profile (Pete Buttigieg, another former DNC chair also-ran, pulled off a similar feat with his 2017 bid). The DNC would also be her largest leadership assignment yet, and allies say she would be best suited as a figurehead paired with a more nuts-and-bolts executive director.