What New DNC Leadership Says About Direction of Democratic Party

After bizarre and inadvertently comical candidate forums, the Democratic National Committee elected Kenneth Martin to be its next chairman and gun control advocate David Hogg to be one of its new vice chairs.

While the DNC boasted of its racial, sexual, and gender diversity (and its quota system to fill party leadership roles), DNC voters ultimately chose two white men to address the party’s problems.

Martin and Hogg emerged victorious in the DNC elections, but not before all the candidates delivered speeches and participated in candidate forums, in which they doubled down on absurd left-wing positions.

When asked by a moderator at a candidates forum whether they believed “racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat,” all of the candidates raised their hands. 

The DNC also highlighted its requirement for “gender balance” among its officers that factors in a “nonbinary” candidate. “Rules specify that when we have a gender nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender-balanced,” Jaime Harrison the outgoing chairman, explained. 

Though Martin is not a nationally known figure, the committee appears to have picked a “true believer.”

Martin hails from the liberal state of Minnesota, which lent its governor, Tim Walz, to Harris’ failed presidential campaign as her vice presidential running mate. As chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the state’s affiliate of the national Democratic Party) since 2011, Martin presided over the party’s passage of the “Trans Refuge” law. The law restricts the state government from complying with subpoenas, arrest warrants, and other legal actions from entities outside the state that are directed against people who come to Minnesota from other states for transgender “treatments.”

Democrats in Minnesota also passed a law that enshrined a “right” to an abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 as well as another law that opposed school choice, and proposed a bill to require all state agencies to refuse to comply with the federal government on border enforcement.

The little-known Martin faces a series of monumental challenges. The Harris-Walz ticket’s losing all seven swing states as well as the popular vote in November’s presidential election has sent the Democratic Party into a period of soul searching. Democrats lost ground nationally with minority, male, and young voters.

Getting the message out was not the issue for Democrats. Voters heard them loud and clear, but the Democratic Party’s priorities do not align with those of most of the electorate. According to a January poll conducted by Ipsos and The New York Times, voters most frequently listed abortion, LGBTQ rights, and climate change as the Democrats’ top priorities. When asked to list their own top concerns, voters chose the economy and inflation, health care, immigration, and taxes.

Harrison, the outgoing DNC chairman, encouraged a more assertive approach from the DNC that would not be a “rubber stamp to whatever the [next Democratic presidential] campaign wants.”

Historically, the chair of the DNC is responsible for leading fundraising and campaign organizing for the Democratic Party. The DNC also organizes the Democratic National Convention, which occurs every four years and features the party’s platform and presidential ticket. It’s likely that Martin will have an outsized impact on leading the party, given the lack of a Democrat president, speaker of the House, or Senate majority leader.

Harrison also argued in a recent interview that Democrats should have kept then-President Joe Biden at the top of the 2024 presidential ticket, even after his disastrous debate performance. 

“I went into this thinking, OK, you’ve got probably the most successful of my lifetime legislative president who has poured tons of money into making sure that not just Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get elected, but Democrats get elected—not just in the battleground states, but all states who support a lot of resources and his own time fundraising in order to strengthen the state parties,” Harrison said.

In Martin, Harrison might have the fighter he desires. Martin has a reputation for competence and ruthlessness. When Martin took over the Minnesota state party, it was in debt, and he was widely credited with turning it around. “Ken will cut you if he has to, but that ruthlessness is what we need to achieve electoral success,” one DNC operative told Politico.

Martin leaned into his reputation in his first press interview since his election, saying, “I’ve always viewed my role as a chair of the Democratic Party to take the low road, so my candidates and elected officials can take the high road; meaning, I’m going to throw a punch.” 

The DNC also elected three vice chairs on Saturday, including Hogg.

Hogg, who is just 24, rose in prominence after surviving a mass shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Not long after the shooting, Hogg and several of his fellow students began appearing in the media and organizing protests in favor of greater restrictions on guns. 

After taking a year off before starting college, Hogg was accepted to Harvard University despite getting a 1270 on the SAT, compared with an average score of 1520 for admitted students at the time. 

Hogg’s election as a Generation Z man comes after Democrats have struggled to attract young men in recent years. In 2024, Donald Trump won a majority of men under the age of 30, according to an AP VoteCast survey, a stark reversal from just four years earlier. 

In an interview with Semafor’s David Weigel, Hogg explained why he thought young men in the United States had shifted right. He cited how COVID-19 had increased loneliness among young men, and he blamed the Democratic Party for not seeming to have a place for men anymore.

“Then people reacted so viscerally to Donald Trump’s election that a lot of liberals started policing everybody around us. It gave us a sense that we’re morally superior, we’re better than other people,” he said, disapprovingly. The question remains whether the new vice chairman will heed his own advice, given his penchant for accusing public officials of immorality on the issue of guns. 

In 2018, Hogg attacked then-Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for allegedly prioritizing campaign contributions over the lives of children.

“I’m going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student’s life in Florida,” Hogg said at a rally in 2018. Rubio had just a few weeks prior spent nearly two hours engaging with survivors of the Parkland school shooting during a CNN town hall. Today, Rubio serves as secretary of state.

Reactions to the DNC election were mixed.

“By continuing to elect radical leftists to party leadership positions, the Democrats are doubling down on their failed policies. The landslide election of President Donald Trump should have shown the Democrats that Americans want secure borders, robust law enforcement, and to reduce the size and scope of government all while increasing individual liberty,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal.

“Democrats appear to have learned nothing from the last election. They still think men can get pregnant, boys should compete in women’s sports, and hiring should be based on DEI, not merit. That’s just fine with me. They can keep appealing to their radical, woke base—and Republicans will focus on representing the rest of America who decisively rejected their message when they reelected President Trump in November,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.

Tyler Austin Harper, a professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and contributing writer at The Atlantic said the pick would not appeal to voters Democrats lost in November’s election.

Noted conservative intellectual Robert P. George wrote on X that members of the DNC had concluded “they weren’t woke enough.”  

Democrats’ extreme left-wing views had a real effect on alienating voters in the last election cycle. To take just two examples, Harris received only 83% of the black American vote, the Democrats’ most loyal base, compared with Biden’s 91% of that vote in 2020. And Harris received only 56% of the Hispanic, vote compared with the 63% Biden drew in 2020.

Trump for his part seems committed to keeping his promises like reforming the deep state and securing the American border.

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