What You Need To Know About The Knock-Down, Drag-Out Race To Lead Democrats Out Of The Wilderness

In a contest dominated by big personalities, rather than ideology, it’s come down to Ken vs. Ben, with Martin O’Malley hot on their heels.

When a fired-up and fractious group of Democratic state party leaders, veteran operatives, activists, and labor leaders assembled to elect a new chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2017, a few short months after Donald Trump was first elected president, the race to lead the party attracted the national attention and ideological infighting one might expect from a high-profile Democratic Senate primary.

Eight years later, Trump is back in the White House — this time with a popular vote win, a sweep of all seven battleground states and gains among voters of color, who had leaned toward Democrats for decades.

But the November election results have not generated the kind of ideologically-tinged “battle for the soul” of the party that occurred in 2017.

Notwithstanding a pre-election forum on Thursday interrupted by left-wing activists, the DNC’s 450 members are set to elect a new DNC chair in National Harbor, Maryland, on Saturday based less on ideology and more on whose personality and résumé best equips them to manage the DNC’s fundraising and organizing bureaucracy, ensure a fair and seamless 2028 presidential primary and make the party’s case to the public.

The top contenders are Ken Martin, chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party; Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.