PORTLAND, Oregon — Democrats must be more aggressive organizers and campaigners to win back the working-class coalition they have increasingly lost to President Donald Trump, according to Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.
Too often in recent decades, the party has ceded ground to Republicans, Martin told States Newsroom in a one-on-one July 31 interview during a stop on a visit to community groups, activists and fundraisers in Oregon.
Since 2009, the national party’s infrastructure has deteriorated, allowing the GOP to build organizational advantages across the country, define Democratic candidates before they can define themselves and put too many states out of reach, he said.
In sometimes more pugnacious terms than might be expected from someone with Martin’s clean-cut corporate look and Midwestern demeanor, he said his task as party leader is to reverse that trend.
“We’re not here to tie one of our hands behind our back,” Martin said. “In the past, I think our party would bring a pencil to a knife fight. We’re going to bring a gun to a knife fight.”
The knife-fight analogy was an answer to a question about how Democrats should respond to Texas Republicans redrawing congressional district lines as the GOP struggles to keep its slim U.S. House majority, but it could apply to other aspects of Martin’s vision for the party.
Martin, whom Democrats elected in February to lead them for the next four years, said Democrats should never turn off their messaging and campaigning apparatus, and work to build party infrastructure in regions, states and cities where they have not competed in decades.
Over 45 minutes, he invoked the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, a liberal whose populist approach to campaigning and governing practically sanctified him among Democrats in Martin’s native Minnesota, several times and indicated Wellstone would be an effective model for Democrats in 2024 and beyond.
“I think what the American people are looking for is people who are going to stand up and fight for what they believe in,” he said. “People didn’t always agree with Paul Wellstone all the time, but they still voted for him. They said … ‘He’s not one of these finger-in-the-wind politicians. He’s standing up for what he believes, and I’m going to give him credit for it even if I don’t agree with him on a particular issue.’ They want authenticity.”
The day after Texas Republicans released a map of proposed new congressional districts in a rare mid-decade redistricting effort that could net them five more U.S. House seats, Martin implied he would support blue-state leaders who retaliated with their own maps to give Democrats an advantage — even as he disparaged the move by Republicans.
He called the redistricting effort “a craven power grab” by Trump and Republicans, accusing them of “trying to rig the system.”
“If they can’t win on their own merits, they’re going to cheat and steal,” he said. “That’s essentially what they’re doing right now.”
But, even as Martin condemned those moves, he said Democrats should feel empowered to respond in kind. “We can’t be the only party that’s playing by the rules,” he said.
Leading Democrats in California, New York and Illinois have openly explored the possibility of emergency redistricting if the proposed Texas map becomes final, even though the issue has raised the ire of some usual allies who support less partisan election infrastructure.
The national party would be “very involved” in challenging the Texas map, as well as working with governors seeking to change their own maps, Martin said.
Martin brought up, unprompted, some of the challenges his party faces.
Twice as many voters had an unfavorable view of Democrats as a favorable one in a July Wall Street Journal survey that showed the party with only 33% of support.
Voters now see Republicans as the party of working-class voters and Democrats as representatives of the elite, Martin said. In the 2024 election, the party did worse with nearly every slice of the electorate other than college-educated voters and wealthy voters.
Martin noted Trump made historic inroads with some traditional Democratic constituencies, earning a higher share of Latino, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, young and working-class voters in 2024 than any Republican candidate in years.
That result was part of an ongoing trend going back 20 years, Martin said, and represents an existential threat to the Democratic party.
“We lost ground with every part of our coalition,” he said. “If we continue to lose ground with working people in this country, with all of the other parts of our coalition, we’re toast. We’ve got to reverse course.”
Democrats’ slide with those constituencies is in part “a branding issue,” permitted by the party’s willingness to let Trump and other Republicans’ campaigning in off-years go unanswered and a lack of a positive message articulated to voters, said Martin.
“We didn’t start our campaign until the spring of 2024 — way too late,” he said. “I would argue that they had already defined us before we ever had a chance to define ourselves. That can never happen again. Never, ever, ever. So that means we have to be campaigning all the time, year-round. Year-round organizing, year-round communications. We never stop talking to voters. We never stop campaigning.”
That campaigning should be focused on a positive view of what Democrats offer voters and include an appeal to “the vast majority of Americans, not just the people at the top.”
“We have to fix our brand,” Martin said. “We have to give people a sense that we’re fighting for them. We have to stand up and fight with everything we have right now, not just against Donald Trump, but for something. We have to give people a positive vision of what their lives would look like with Democrats in charge.”
Democrats’ message should be about a rising tide lifting all boats, Martin said, quoting Wellstone, for whom Martin, 52, interned at the beginning of his career and still considers an inspiration.
“Remember Paul’s famous slogan: ‘We all do better when we all do better,’” he said. “That should be the slogan of the Democratic Party.”
He praised Zohran Mamdani, the winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, for running an energetic campaign that was focused on showing how he could improve New Yorkers’ lives.
That should include a policy focus on affordability, health care access and a government that works for people beyond the elite.
But even as Martin articulated the positive message he said Democrats should focus on, he slipped into slamming Trump and Republicans, saying the tax and spending cuts law Trump signed last month would take health care away from people. The law was among the least popular in decades, he noted.
There was room for both a positive campaigning and highlighting Republicans’ unpopularity when appropriate, said Martin.
“It’s a both/and,” he said. “Let’s tell folks what is happening and let’s tell folks what Democrats are going to do.”
The unpopularityof Republicans’ law, which is projected to cut more than $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid, food stamps and other programs while lowering taxes on high earners, gives Democrats an opening in a difficult cycle for U.S. Senate races, Martin said.
Democrats — who control 47 seats, including two independents, compared to 53 for Republicans, who also hold a tie-breaking vote in Vice President JD Vance — need to net four additional seats in next year’s elections to win the majority in the chamber, which Martin said was possible under the right circumstances.
That view is out of step with current projections, which show Democratic seats in Georgia and Michigan at least as likely to flip as Republican seats in North Carolina and Maine. Democrats would have to win all four of those most competitive races, plus two that would be further stretches, to gain a majority.
Beyond North Carolina and Maine, Martin said the map to Democrats’ regaining the Senate would go through traditionally red states.
Iowa, where incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst could be vulnerable, and Alaska, where former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola would be a strong challenger to incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, could be Democrats’ 50th and 51st Senate seats, he said.
Or, if right-wing primary challengers defeat more establishment incumbents in Louisiana and Texas, those states could turn into pickup opportunities, he said — though Trump won both states easily, by more than 20 points in the former.
To win next year and beyond, Democrats must unify, he said.
Elements of the party that would impose purity tests on others — whether that’s progressives excluding moderates or vice versa — make that harder, he said.
“I believe you win elections by addition, not subtraction,” he said. “You win by bringing in people, new voices, and growing your coalition.”
Martin also wants to grow the map and compete across the country, using a strategy pioneered by former DNC Chair Howard Dean, who was chair from 2005 to 2009.
When President Barack Obama’s political team took control of the party apparatus in 2009, it “completely eviscerated” the state party infrastructure Dean had built, Martin said.
Earlier this year, he announced an initiative to provide at least $1 million a month to all state parties. The goal is to expand the number of competitive states and districts, reversing a trend that has seen fewer presidential contests focused on fewer states.
“There’s no such thing as a perpetual red state or a perpetual blue state,” he said. Turning states from Republican strongholds to competitive, or from competitive to favoring Democrats — or even to maintain Democratic strength — takes investment of money and energy, he said.
“It’s critical, and it’s something I firmly believe in,” he said. I’ve seen for so many years our national party and other party committees not making the investments to actually call themselves a national party,” he said. “You can’t be a national party if you’re just competing in seven states.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.