Democrats’ Top Fundraisers Say Ken Martin Was Nowhere To Be Found

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, has not been reaching out to some of his party’s major fundraisers despite being in debt, according to people who have spent decades raising money for the Democratic Party. Mr. Martin, who was the subject of multiple reports on Sunday detailing mismanagement and paranoia within the organization, is now facing calls for him to step down as Democrats gear up for the midterms. Mr. Martin was elected chairman of the DNC earlier last year as his party was reeling from its 2024 losses. He promised to build a more capable organization that worked more closely with state parties in order to win back blue-collar voters who had sided with President Trump. He pointed to his track record of success running the Democrats’ state organization in Minnesota as proof that he was the kind of leader the national party needed. Now, just over a year into the job, Mr. Martin appears to be floundering. The DNC is still in debt less than 100 days until the midterm elections, which is also the unofficial kick-off of the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, which the DNC itself will run. According to the New York Times, he faced a human resources complaint after he threw a phone in frustration near a subordinate. He also demanded that staff members stop leaking to the press at a private meeting. On Monday, just 24 hours after the Times published its piece, longtime Democratic fundraisers began airing their grievances about Mr. Martin. Rufus Gifford, who ran the fundraising operations for President Obama’s 2012 campaign, President Biden’s 2020 campaign, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, says he has never heard from Mr. Martin. “Today the DNC is spiraling towards irrelevance,” Mr. Gifford wrote in a Substack post on Monday. “If you don’t have the money (and you might not in the moment) you have to have built the national relationships so you can call your finance team and ask them to put together the money.” He recalled that just a few days prior, he had been having drinks with a major party fundraiser. They lamented the fact that neither had heard from Mr. Martin since he was elected DNC chairman last year. In midterm election years, national party committees do not matter as much as they do in presidential cycles. For the midterms, the DNC or RNC chairman must be able to plan some minor organizing exercises, coordinate with candidates on messaging, and be prepared to pour money into states at a moment’s notice. The key to all of that work is raising money — and lots of it. Mr. Gifford says that, with all his years working on the finance side of Democratic politics and at the DNC, he does not believe Mr. Martin can survive this story. He says Mr. Martin should go for the good of the party. “At this point, I think there is no saving Martin’s chairmanship. He is a good man with good intentions but simply not meeting this critical moment. As Democrats, the only solution is to acknowledge the problem and fix it. Now,” Mr. Gifford writes. Another fundraiser for the party, Shannon Watts — founder of the pro-gun control organization Moms Demand Action — has an even worse story about her relationship with Mr. Martin and his inner circle. On Sunday, she disclosed that not only has she never heard from Mr. Martin, but the one time she did hear from his staff was when someone called to tell her that Mr. Martin did not like something she had posted on X. In a follow-up post on X, she said she would not be answering his staff’s calls in the future. On Monday, it became clear that Mr. Martin’s days may be numbered at the DNC. Several members of Congress have called for him to step down, citing not only his inability to capably raise money, but apparently to manage his own team. “As Democrats, we have become too captured by failing strategies. We must fail forward, and pivot,” Congressman Sam Liccardo said Monday.If he does resign, the leadership post would likely fall to one of the four deputies, as it did when Donna Brazile took over amidst the email leak scandal in 2016.

Democrats’ Top Fundraisers Say Ken Martin Was Nowhere To Be Found

Democrats’ Top Fundraisers Say Ken Martin Was Nowhere To Be Found

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