The Democratic National Committee on Saturday elected Ken Martin as its chairman, tapping a low-profile political insider from Minnesota to guide the party forward after its crushing defeats last fall.
Mr. Martin, 51, triumphed in a 75-day contest that turned less on why Democrats lost to President Trump for a second time than on internal relationships and mechanics in the 448-member Democratic National Committee.
The committee raises tens of millions of dollars every year and can help set the tone of the party. It provides infrastructure and financial support for down-ballot candidates in off years before building an operation for a presidential nominee.
Mr. Martin captured the chairmanship on the strength of his yearslong relationships with party members, whose affection he won by promising to focus more on their concerns than past leaders have.
In his victory speech, Mr. Martin touched on a theme that Democrats hit throughout the weekend — that Mr. Trump was aligned with his billionaire supporters rather than with the American people.
“Are we on the side of the robber baron, the ultrawealthy billionaire, the oil and gas polluter, the union buster?” Mr. Martin asked. “Or are we on the side of the American working family, the small-business owner, the farmer, the immigrant and the students?”
He described the early days of the Trump administration as “what happens when amateur hour meets demolition derby.”
Mr. Martin defeated seven other candidates, including his top rival, Ben Wikler, the energetic chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Mr. Wikler’s base of support came from the party’s biggest donors and institutional players in Washington, including Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker.
Mr. Martin won comfortably, with 246.5 votes to Mr. Wikler’s 134.5.
Late Friday, Mr. Wikler disclosed that his financial backers had included the billionaire Reid Hoffman and George Soros’s political action committee, both of which gave him $250,000.
Mr. Martin inherits a diminished party whose brand has suffered from its losses in 2024. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University showed that just 31 percent of voters viewed the Democratic Party favorably, a record low, while 43 percent saw the Republican Party favorably, more than ever before. And in the last four years, during President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term and the tenure of the previous D.N.C. chairman, Jaime Harrison, Democrats have lost control of the White House, the Senate and the House.
After his victory, Mr. Martin pledged to conduct and make public a review of why Democrats lost the presidential election, though in an interview he said the party’s examination would not address the question of whether Mr. Biden should have sought re-election.
“That’s not going to be part of the review,” Mr. Martin said when asked about Mr. Biden’s role in the party’s defeat. “For me, I’m looking at things that will help inform the future, because I can’t change the past.”
Mr. Martin said that the review — which he said would not be called an “autopsy” because the party was “not dead” — would be led by trusted people outside the party and would encompass the efforts of aligned super PACs and nonprofits.
“We want all of those at a table so we can actually learn the right lessons from this election,” he said, adding that he hoped to avoid a “circular firing squad.”
While Mr. Martin portrayed himself as a disrupter who would upend the D.N.C.’s longstanding relationships with Washington consultants, he was in fact the race’s party insider. He founded, and for years has led, the organization of Democratic state chairs, an alternate power center within the party. The group, which has often pushed for more money for state parties, emerged as an annoyance — or worse — to top D.N.C. officials in Washington who were more focused on winning national elections than on local politics.
Still, Mr. Martin’s connections prevailed.
“Ken knows that we need to reach out to Americans in every state and every county, no matter how red or how blue, and he will do exactly that as our new chair of the D.N.C.,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement. “I’m excited to work with him to strengthen our party and win elections.”
The vote came after a day of in-person jockeying at the same convention center in Oxon Hill, Md., that has traditionally hosted the Conservative Political Action Conference. Mr. Wikler and Mr. Martin both had sponsored hospitality suites, and hosted kickoff drinks and small bites for supporters.
Mr. Martin will take over a party apparatus with stable finances after its defeat to Mr. Trump last year but without an obvious national leader or a consistent message to voters. When Mr. Trump ascended to the White House eight years ago, angry Democrats marched in the streets by the millions, flooding campaigns and liberal causes with donations meant to push back against the administration.
That is not the case this time.
Still, throughout the campaign for party chair, Mr. Martin and Mr. Wikler both insisted that little was wrong with Democrats’ overall message: that they are the party of working people while Mr. Trump and Republicans align with billionaire moguls.
During a final candidate forum on Thursday in Washington, Mr. Wikler drew rousing applause for defending former Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance as a candidate. Mr. Martin also argued that Democrats did not need to change their message to voters.
“Anyone saying we need to start over with a new message is wrong,” he said. “We got the right message.”
Other candidates included former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who entered Saturday in a distant third behind Mr. Martin and Mr. Wikler among D.N.C. members who had publicly declared their support. He received 44 votes.
Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential bid, made a late entry into the race with an argument that the existing candidates were engaging in small-ball thinking. He won only two votes.
As is typical for D.N.C. elections, the race also attracted a few gadflies, including Marianne Williamson, the two-time presidential candidate. They were allowed to participate in the party’s online and in-person candidate forums and to deliver speeches to the national committee members who gathered on Saturday at a hotel in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital.
But by and large, they added little to the party’s discussion about how to proceed. Ms. Williamson ended up endorsing Mr. Martin in her nominating speech on Saturday.
Much of the race’s sharpest internal divisions focused on the question of the loyalty of the party’s biggest donors. Reid Hoffman and Alexander Soros, billionaires who fund a host of Democratic causes, both backed Mr. Wikler. John Stocks, the chairman of the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy dark-money liberal donors, spoke at Mr. Wikler’s rally on the eve of the party’s vote.
Yet Mr. Martin, in his post-victory interview, said he did not plan to seek to make amends with the donor class that supported his opponent in the contest to lead the party.
“I don’t have any repair work to do,” Mr. Martin said. “If they want to talk to me, they can come talk to me.”
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