SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — Four people are running to be the next Democratic National Committee chair, looking to take on the task of reinvigorating a party demoralized by a second loss to President-elect Donald Trump.
Others may still get into the race as the party reckons with the 2024 election, which saw Trump gain with nearly every demographic group in a decisive repudiation of the incumbent party. The committee’s roughly 450 members will elect a successor for outgoing chairperson Jaime Harrison on Feb. 1.
The four declared candidates spoke to The Associated Press last week in Scottsdale, Ariz., where they were making their pitch in public and private at a meeting of state Democratic chairs. Here are their responses.
Should Joe Biden have dropped out sooner?
The 82-year-old incumbent has been criticized for seeking reelection when many Americans were concerned about his age, and he has been accused of not giving Vice President Kamala Harris enough time to distinguish herself against Trump.
Ken Martin, Democratic chairman in Minnesota and DNC vice chair: “To me, it’s an academic exercise. You can’t change the past. So for us, it’s really about what lessons can we draw right now that can inform the future.”
Martin O’Malley, former Maryland governor and Social Security administrator: “I don’t know. You guys playing this D.C. parlor game on me, I’m not going to engage in that. Sorry.”
James Skoufis, New York state senator: “Yes. A 107-day runway made for an exceptionally difficult set of circumstances. And it was clear to most Democrats at the time that President Biden was not well situated to run for reelection. And if dropping out sooner would have meant a primary, so be it. Vice President Harris, I’m very confident, still would have likely been the nominee if there was a primary. She would have been a stronger nominee with that longer runway.”
Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party: “My campaign slogan is ‘unite, fight, win.’ And to me, uniting means a reckoning with how we can adapt to do better, but not recriminations about different things in the past. So my focus is on learning every lesson that we can apply in these next four years and beyond to build the new capacities that are going to allow us to win the lessons that were out of reach in 2024 and the last few years.”
Did Kamala Harris spend too much time with Liz Cheney and courting Republican votes?
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressives argued before and after Election Day that Harris should have focused more on working-class voters and less on Republicans and right-leaning voters disaffected with Trump.
Martin: “Were there things we can learn from the election? Sure. We’re going to have to dig into all that. One thing I would say that’s important is that we have to make sure that we are competing in all spaces and we’re talking to all voters. And I’m not suggesting we spend a lot of time talking to Republican voters, don’t get me wrong. But we need to make sure that we are reaching outside of just our comfort zone and our base and trying to really make a significant play for independent voters.”
O’Malley: “I don’t know. That’s another parlor game thing, and I’m not going to second-guess that. The only thing I know for sure, from all the people I’ve talked to now across the country, is that there’s pretty widespread belief that Americans’ primary concern in this election was economic anxieties about the future. Fear of the future. Fear that their own work wasn’t sufficient to keep their head above water. And we failed to speak to their economic concerns.”
Skoufis: “I believe it was absolutely the right thing to be spending time and hitting the stump with Liz Cheney and other Republicans, disaffected former Trump administration officials. That was absolutely the right thing to do. And similarly, we absolutely need to be doing more of rebuilding the fraying edges of our tent on the left. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
Wikler: “I live in a state where the suburban counties that Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris visited actually grew vote share for Democrats relative to 2020. Harris did better in the (suburban Milwaukee) counties than Biden had in the 2020 election. And I think there were some voters who are traditionally Republican who are making up their mind in the last second who saw that Republicans like them could vote for a Democrat this year. At the same time, there’s a ton of working-class folks who didn’t hear our message and who we need to find more ways to reach, that often won’t rely on being familiar with political figures that play a big role in cable news but aren’t present in people’s lives. And figuring out how to how to reach those folks, I think, is the next big challenge that we need to build on.”
