Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin faces a widening revolt from donors, operatives, and fellow party leaders who say his leadership has left the DNC broke, directionless, and unprepared for the 2026 midterms, yet he refuses to step aside.
Rufus Gifford, who served as finance chairman for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign, published a Substack essay this week declaring that the DNC under Martin is "spiraling toward irrelevance." Gifford did not hold back on the chairman's future.
"At this point, I think there is no saving Martin's chairmanship," Gifford wrote. "He is a good man with good intentions but simply not meeting this critical moment."
Shannon Watts, the former leader of gun-safety group Moms Demand Action who sat on the DNC's finance committee in 2024, was blunter. "Ken needs to step aside," Watts said. "I think Ken knows he needs to step aside." She added: "There's a reason he's worried he's going to be fired and it's because he's not up to the job."
Martin has responded not by addressing the criticism but by retreating from it. He has avoided national media appearances, declined an interview request from the Associated Press, and, according to half a dozen state leaders and committee members who spoke anonymously, has taken to monitoring critics' social media posts. A DNC staffer called Watts directly to urge her to delete a social media post critical of Martin.
The numbers tell the story Martin's Substack posts try to obscure. Federal filings show the DNC reported roughly $16.3 million in the bank at the end of June, against more than $18 million in debt. The Republican National Committee, by contrast, reported more than $128 million in cash and no debt at all.
That gap, north of $100 million, landed after Martin had already taken an unusual step to keep the committee solvent. Last fall, the DNC used its Washington headquarters as collateral to secure a $15 million line of credit, a move critics cite as evidence of financial mismanagement.
Earlier financial snapshots paint a similarly grim picture. The Washington Examiner reported that the DNC raised only $11.4 million in March with $13.9 million cash on hand, while the RNC pulled in $21.2 million and held $116.7 million during the same period.
Martin, for his part, insists the committee is raising historic sums. "The current DNC has raised the most money of any DNC without the White House in the 198-year history of the Democratic Party," he wrote on Substack. DNC officials say the committee has raised more than it did in 2018, the last midterm cycle when Democrats were out of power. But those claims sit awkwardly next to a balance sheet that shows the party is technically underwater.
Martin's financial struggles might have remained a back-office headache if not for his handling of the DNC's 2024 election follow-up report. He promised to release the document, then withheld it for months, then eventually made it public, while simultaneously telling party members it was too flawed to be helpful.
The report, a 192-page document titled "Build to Win. Build to Last," arrived riddled with blank sections, factual errors, and considerable red-letter editorial comments still embedded in the text. It failed to mention Gaza, Biden's age, or Kamala Harris's selection of Tim Walz as her running mate, omissions that drew fire from across the party's ideological spectrum. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it "pretty unbelievable" that Gaza was not mentioned once, Fox News reported.
Martin himself conceded the product was substandard. "I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won't meet your standards," he told party members. Democratic strategist Steve Schale called the release "an unmitigated s***show."
The debacle accelerated calls for Martin's ouster that had been building for months. Former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg went public with a demand that Martin resign.
"It's clear that Chair Ken Martin has lost the confidence of his staff, supporters, and most importantly, millions of Americans counting on the DNC to help Democrats win up and down the ballot in 2026 and 2028," Hogg said.
Hogg and Martin had already clashed over party direction. Hogg pledged $20 million through his organization Leaders We Deserve to primary what he called "ineffective" Democratic incumbents in safe blue districts. Martin responded by proposing a neutrality rule requiring all committee officials to stay out of Democratic primaries, a measure the Washington Free Beacon reported was set for a vote at the DNC's August meeting. Hogg refused to back down, saying he would not relinquish his vice chair role or sever ties with his organization.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has fielded calls about a possible candidacy to replace Martin, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations. O'Malley finished a distant third in the DNC chair election last winter and did not respond to a request for comment. But his name resurfacing signals that party insiders are already gaming out the succession.
The most likely window for a leadership change, the AP reported, is the DNC's winter meeting after the November midterm elections, before the 2028 presidential primary process begins in earnest. Under party rules, Martin can also be removed through a two-thirds vote of no confidence by DNC members, or through pressure from senior House and Senate leaders.
Martin still has defenders. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said while campaigning in Pennsylvania this week that Martin "has my full support." Jeffries pointed to Democrats winning "the overwhelming majority of elections" since Martin took over and played down the party's financial challenges.
Shad Murib, the Colorado Democratic Party chair and a DNC member, dismissed the criticism as overblown.
"What we're seeing right now is a whole group of folks who live on Twitter and consultants fighting harder against Ken Martin than they've ever fought against Donald Trump," Murib said.
Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass echoed the sentiment. "This is a ridiculous conversation to be having right now," she said. "If people don't like Ken, they can have a conversation with him in two years. But right now, we all need to be behind the chair and keep our heads down and do our jobs."
Not every prominent Democrat was willing to go on the record defending Martin. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who has traveled to key states in recent weeks ahead of a potential presidential bid, declined three separate times to answer directly when asked whether he has confidence in the DNC chair.
"My confidence is in the people," Moore told the Associated Press. "My confidence is in making sure that we have a system in place that actually allows the people's voices to be heard." He said he was not looking for "wins on behalf of a political structure or party bosses." Moore did praise the DNC for embracing a new primary calendar that promotes more diverse states, a process that gave South Carolina and Nevada lead-off roles in the 2028 cycle.
Moore's careful non-answer spoke louder than Jeffries's endorsement. A governor eyeing 2028 who cannot bring himself to say "yes, I have confidence in the party chair" is not a man who expects that chair to be around much longer.
Martin, meanwhile, has spent the past two weeks visiting six states, meeting with civil rights leaders in Nashville and mayors from across the country in Atlanta. On Substack, he projected optimism: "If the question is whether the Democratic Party will be ready to win, everywhere, at every level, in this election and for the decade ahead, the answer is a resounding yes."
Senior members of the DNC leadership are privately complaining that Martin has failed to maintain relationships with donors and key stakeholders. Watts said she was ready and willing to help Martin after he took over the chairmanship but he never called. That pattern, allies offering help, Martin ignoring the phone, tracks with the broader criticism that the chairman has isolated himself at precisely the moment the party needs outreach most.
One Martin ally compared the fallout from Gifford's Substack essay to the aftermath of Biden's debate performance, the one that effectively forced Biden to abandon his reelection campaign. If the comparison was meant to reassure, it did the opposite: it placed Martin's predicament in the same category as the most dramatic leadership collapse in recent Democratic history.
Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser, told the Washington Examiner the autopsy debacle was "sufficient evidence that he is not the right person to lead the DNC at this time."
Democrats have midterm elections in November and a presidential primary season not far behind. Their national committee is $18 million in the hole, its headquarters is pledged as collateral, and its chairman's strategy for survival is to avoid reporters and watch critics' social media feeds. If this is what "ready to win" looks like, Republicans should hope Martin stays exactly where he is.
