Ken Martin, the newly installed chair of the Democratic National Committee, is kicking off his first major trip as party leader in an effort for the organization to “get out of D.C.”
Martin’s trip, which begins Monday, will bring him to key swing states including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the blue state of Illinois and two red states, Texas and Missouri, according to details of the trip shared with NBC News. The stops on the trip will include a meeting with the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, meetings with the state Democratic Party chairs in Illinois and Missouri, and door-knocking for Democratic state House candidate Dan Goughnour ahead of his March special election outside of Pittsburgh.
“It’s time for the DNC to get out of D.C. — that means getting out of our comfort zone, having tough but honest conversations with voters, and showing that we’re willing to fight for people. Democrats will win by organizing everywhere, competing across the ballot in every community, and uniting working families from all backgrounds,” Martin told NBC News in a statement.
He went on to criticize President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, arguing they have a plan to “give trillions of dollars to billionaires by cutting things like health care for kids, seniors and rural communities — and we can’t let that happen.”
“It’s time for Democrats to show up in all 3,244 counties — red, purple, blue — to make our case,” Martin added.
Martin won the chairmanship earlier this month at the DNC’s winter meeting, after more than a decade as the leader of Minnesota’s state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He has also held senior roles within the national party apparatus during that time.
Throughout his campaign to lead the party, Martin pitched his vision for the DNC chair as multifaceted — helping build out the party’s infrastructure across the country and U.S. territories, embarking on a “post-election review,” bringing the party’s message to new outlets through new messengers, and also going on offense against Trump and his policies.
The decision to kick off his time leading the party with the cross-country tour speaks to the party’s need to shore up its standing across the nation and with multiple voting blocs, after a presidential election in which former Vice President Kamala Harris lost all seven of the major swing states and lost ground with key pieces of the Democratic base, including Latinos and young voters.
Asked by reporters shortly after his victory what his first priorities as chair would be, Martin said he wanted to look at the party’s finances, begin that “post-election review” and then start bringing the fight to Trump.
“We need to start getting out there right now, when the stakes are so high. If we’re not willing to start the fight right now against Donald Trump, and he’s already failing the American people, no one’s going to believe that we’re going to fight for them when they put us in power,” he said.
“So we’re going to be aggressive about litigating the case against Donald Trump. We’re going to be aggressive about standing up a war room to get back against the misinformation and disinformation campaigns that we’ve already seen in the last two weeks,” Martin said. “And we’re going to make sure that we start the planning process of getting ready for ’25, ’26 and then, of course, ’28.”
In an interview Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” announcing the trip, Martin acknowledged that the party’s brand has taken a significant hit recently and pegged the trip as a way to reconnect the party with voters.
“So many parts of our coalition left us this last election cycle, right?” he said. “We know that. From Latino voters to working-class households, to young voters, to women. You can go down the list, the only two groups we overperformed with last election cycle were wealthy households and college-educated voters. That’s a damning indictment of the Democratic Party.”
Later, he said that Democrats have started to “message to smaller and smaller parts of our coalition, and as a result we’ve lost the narrative, who we are as a Democratic Party.”
Asked about how to toe the line between resisting Trump and not disrespecting those who voted for him, Martin the party has to fight back against Republicans but not stay in a posture of “perpetual resistance.”
“But we also need to give people a sense of who we are as Democrats, what we believe in and what we’re fighting for,” he added.
