Martin O’Malley has the kind of experience that typically benefits a Democrat looking to shape the party’s future after devastating losses in recent years. election.
He is a former governor, former mayor and a 2016 presidential candidate who until recently served in President Biden’s administration. Still, O’Malley faces a difficult path in the race to try to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as the party reckons with the reality that key groups of voters turned against it.
Critical to O’Malley’s effort is a campaign platform, first reported by CBS News, that calls for reconnecting the Democratic Party “to the kitchen table of every American family.”
“We suffered a very bad loss,” O’Malley said in an interview, urging Democrats to “learn from it to win the next battles.”
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His vision is for a 57-state and territory strategy, along with plans to give campaigns “world-class AI tools for voter outreach, research, communications and financial management, removing barriers to effective campaigning.” O’Malley’s pitch also focuses on “reinvesting in direct voter registration,” as part of his pledge to the party to “make voter protection and registration the pillars of the change we need to win.”
Democrats endured a chaotic election cycle in 2024, punctuated by the urge within the party to persuade Mr. Biden to end his re-election run after a dismal debate performance in June. While Mr. Biden ultimately ended his bid in July endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris To take his place at the top of the ticket, the 107-day sprint that followed resulted in Democrats losing the White House and the Senate, while narrowly failing to regain control of the House. acquire.
Now the party is essentially leaderless and preparing for the return of an emboldened Donald Trump to Washington, where he will be able to take advantage of The unified control of the Republicans of Congress and the White House. This dynamic will come in handy at the time of the February 1 DNC chairmanship election, given the unease among Democrats that was evident in the weeks following the presidential election.
“I want to see someone who is not from the Washington circuit, but who has actually been in the fabric of the country,” Marcy Kaptur, a battleground Democrat from Ohio, said of the DNC chair race.
Failure can mean opportunity. The party’s struggles mean O’Malley, like other ambitious Democrats, have a chance to become the next chairman and exert broad influence at a critical time for the party, which looks to regain ground in the midterm elections of 2026 and the presidential elections of 2028. . For all his apparent vulnerabilities, Trump was far more successful in this election than ever before, winning all seven presidential battlegrounds. Whether what happened in 2024 will be a tangible turning point for Democrats will likely loom in the seat race in the coming weeks.
“That’s the big change that happened when this election went the wrong way for us,” O’Malley said. “We are now in a mode where we need a changemaker, not a caregiver.”
Among those running for president are Ken Martin, leader of the Minnesota branch of the Democratic Party and vice chairman of the DNC, and Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. frontrunners. Martin has deep relationships within the DNC and boasts a statewide winning streak for candidates in Minnesota, while Wikler has the political pull to help lead the party in one of the nation’s seven presidential battlegrounds.
Earlier this month, Martin announced a framework that includes his push for a “democratic infrastructure in all 3,244 provinces” across the country, addressing the branding problem evident in the 2024 election results.
“The majority of Americans now believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and that the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and elites,” Martin said in his framework. “It is a damning indictment of our party brand. We must be willing to dig deep and update the Democratic agenda to unite families across race, age, background and class.”
During a brief pitch to party leaders at a meeting in Washington DC last week, where Martin and O’Malley also spoke, Wikler told his fellow Democrats: “we need to build a battle plan to change the way we communicate so that we See what we mean when we say we fight for working people.”
This is not the first time O’Malley has been linked to leading the party. Days after the 2016 election, he posted on social media media that, despite encouragement, he would not run for the presidency. Eight years later, he is going through a brief period to argue his case while focusing on his long career in politics.
Both Martin and Wikler were heavily involved in the 2024 cycle, and the vote to lead the DNC will take place just under three months after Election Day. That dynamic is one of the challenges O’Malley faces as he tries to quickly build support among the DNC’s relatively small group of voting members. While O’Malley can tout his experience in elected office, both Martin and Wikler can point to their work leading their respective state parties in 2020 and the crucial elections that have taken place over the past four years.
But if Democrats are eager to distance themselves from what transpired in the last election, O’Malley may be able to capitalize on that in an effort to be seen as more of an outsider than his main competitors. And about a month into his bid, O’Malley’s campaign is confident he’s making a compelling case that will resonate.
“As things stand now, we know Governor O’Malley has received the support of nearly four dozen DNC members,” a campaign spokesman said, adding that ahead of the Feb. 1 contest “we have the momentum in this race .”
O’Malley served as mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 and went on to win two terms as governor of Maryland, including a stint leading the Democratic Governors Association. However, his political power has since faded, most evident from the struggles he faced during his campaign for president during the 2016 Democratic primaries. Before O’Malley announced his run for chairman, he spent nearly a year working at the federal government as commissioner for social security.
That experience is woven into O’Malley’s platform, which also calls for creating “a feedback loop for our local and national elected officials to ensure they can help inform our messaging and tactics.”
“We all know we have to restore our credibility,” O’Malley said. ‘We must learn from our shortcomings, but also from our candidates who have succeeded. But only one of us [in the race for DNC chair] has in fact proven its ability to achieve a rapid turnaround, as we must do now to win the next election.”
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contributed to this report.
