He’s just Ken…

There’s nothing wrong with National Harbor, Maryland. 

The tourist area located 20 minutes south of DC boasts attractions like a casino, an outlet mall, and a Ferris wheel, which - after living in Washington for over 10 years - I still haven’t met anyone who has taken a ride on it. It’s a clean, sterile place devoid of any architectural character. It’s just fine. 

It was an appropriate backdrop for the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting this weekend, where 448 party members convened to do the Cupid Shuffle and elect new officers to guide The Party out of the political wilderness. 

The most prominent election held Saturday was the vote for DNC chair, a position that will have a lot of say over the party’s fundraising and organizing programs moving forward. Over the last few months, that campaign played out uneventfully, pitting two popular state party chairs, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, against each other. The race avoided falling into any real ideological debates between the Left or the centrist wings of the party. Instead, it was decided by which candidate had closer relationships with the several hundred party insiders casting their ballots. 

In that context, Ken Martin came out on top, winning decisively on the first round. Here’s how the vote went down:

Martin has long been the leader of the “Association of State Democratic Committees,” a club that includes many of the state-based DNC members who have the power to vote in leadership elections. For years, he has gone to bat for under-resourced state parties and occasionally sparred publicly with the DNC on their behalf. As a result, he entered the chair’s race with broad support from the many voting DNC members not based in DC. 

Meanwhile, many in the DC donor, political, and operative class—the Obama, Biden, and Harris crowd—wanted Wikler. He racked up endorsements from Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, in addition to a handful of prominent Governors. Under Wikler’s leadership, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has turbocharged its grassroots fundraising efforts and turned obscure state and local elections into important causes for Democrats nationwide. 

Before the vote, I spent much of the week gathering with a few hundred Democratic operatives at a post-election debrief event in Arizona. The general vibe from my conversations there - one I’ve heard repeatedly for the past few weeks - was that Martin would likely walk away with it and would do a “fine” job leading the committee. Few people were excited about his candidacy, but it was hard to find anyone really opposed to him either. 

I recently wrote about the DNC and how everybody has a lot of hot takes about what it should or should not be doing. In electing Martin, Democrats chose someone who will likely manage the party's functions and bureaucracy with basic competency. A lot won’t change at the DNC, and a lot of the committee’s core portfolio of work probably doesn’t need to change that much.

But for progressives and others looking for a leading anti-Trump foil to inspire millions of Democrats to get involved and take on Trump, I can’t imagine Martin will be your guy.

He’s just Ken, after all. Let’s just hope he will be enough.

More reads on the DNC chair election:

• POLITICO: “Minnesota nice has 2 sides’: Why some Dems see a ruthless leader in Ken Martin”

• WSJ: “Democrats Have a New Leader but Haven’t Come to Grips With Failure”

• NYT: “We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump”

For National Finance Chair, Democrats choose the swamp

One DNC leadership election you undoubtedly ignored this weekend was the committee’s selection of a new National Finance Chair. The person in that position is basically the party’s chief fundraiser, responsible for stewarding the party’s major gifts.

Committee members had two candidates to choose from: Chris Korge, the current National Finance Chair and a wealthy South Florida developer, and Tim Lim, a top Democratic digital consultant. 

The somewhat brash Korge has a long, checkered political past. In a 2006 memoir, his cousin, former Miami Beach Mayor Alex Daoud, accused him of handing out cash bribes. More recently, Korge raised a few eyebrows during the mini-campaign for Finance Chair, demanding Democrats stop demonizing the wealthy. “The time has come for the Democratic party to stop assaulting our wealthy donors,” Korge told a virtual forum. “The people that give us money…they’re not not paying taxes.”

Korge also created a random new DNC position for his friend and referred to Kamala Harris as a “flawless candidate” in a post-election note to donors. His affiliation with the national party has always been a little contentious to some. In 2019, one liberal magazine ran a piece about Korge headlined “The DNC’s New Finance Chair Embodies Everything the Left Hates About the Democratic Establishment.”

The party’s other choice for Finance Chair, Tim Lim, has been widely respected among Democratic operatives for his grassroots fundraising track record. Over the past few weeks, he was critical of Korge’s defense of the ultra-wealthy and presented several smart ideas for improving communication and data sharing across the various DNC fundraising programs. 

Ultimately, the bottom line is all that mattered to the DNC’s voting members. As Korge oversaw a period when the DNC raised a historic amount of money last year (more than $600 million), committee members were happy to keep the cash flowing and reward him with another term. He beat Lim 289 to 129. 

More things you should read

• Two weeks after its removal from app stores in the U.S., traffic to TikTok is only down by about 10%, according to this report from CNBC.

• As a result of President Trump’s trade war with one of our closest allies, Canadians are booing the U.S. National Anthem at sporting events. It’s becoming a trend.

• The FCC is now carrying out Trump’s personal political vendettas - this time asking CBS for unedited transcripts and tapes from their sit down with then-candidate Kamala Harris last fall on 60 Minutes. Conservatives have accused the network of editing the interview in her favor. Democrats have been caught flat-footed on this one.

• Bloomberg’s Soundbite newsletter published an excellent mini-profile of Brett Cooper, “the conservative star who wants to host the ‘Call Her Daddy’ of the Right.”

• House Majority PAC, the leading outside group supporting Democrats in Congress, plans to spend $50 million on outreach to working-class voters next cycle via a new effort, the “Win Them Back Fund.”

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