Former DFL Party chairman Ken Martin took the reins of the Democratic National Committee in February. Credit: MinnPost file photo by Craig Lassig
WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders are jubilant about the party’s sweep in Tuesday’s elections and Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin is among those celebrating.
“Democrats are back,” crowed Martin, the former Minnesota DFL Party chairman and 1991 Eden Prairie High School graduate.
Since taking the reins of the national Democratic Party in February, Martin has suffered brutal criticism from party insiders who accused him of failing to unify the fractured and disillusioned party and prevent infighting.
Rahm Emanuel, who served as chief of staff for former President Barack Obama, said several months ago that Democrats had missed “the biggest political opportunity in a decade” because Trump provided a “target rich environment.”
“And the DNC has spent six months on a firing squad in the circle, and can’t even fire a shot out,” Emanuel said.
Martin, however, said Democrats are unified, coalescing around a common theme of “affordability” that emerged from Democrats’ trio of wins in New York, New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday.
“We gave people something to be for, not just against,” Martin said.
In fact, New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, perfected the art of running on the economy and “affordability.”
He promised fare-free buses, fully subsidized child care, rent control and other new programs to help the poor and struggling blue-collar workers. That theme resonated early for Mamdani, winning him the Democratic primary and propelling him from a little-known New York assemblyman to city hall.
Nonetheless, Martin said the new Democratic mantra and Democratic victories this week were a team effort.
“We didn’t stumble into this, we worked for it,” Martin said.
Besides winning the governorship in New Jersey, flipping the Virginia governor’s seat and winning two statewide races in Georgia, Democrats swept many down-ballot races. They even swamped school board elections from Pennsylvania to Texas.
Still, Republicans shrugged off the results of Tuesday’s elections, which were seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump.
“There’s no surprises,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference. “What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night’s election results.”
He also cast the Democratic Party – based on Mamdani’s big win – as the “Marxist Party.”
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance advised Republicans against taking the results too seriously, writing Wednesday on X that “I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states.”
“That’s bull****, we won all over the country,” Martin said.
Martin was right. Democrats had big wins in Georgia and Virginia, former “red” states that are now “purplish,” and victories in the former “blue” state of Pennsylvania, which is now a key swing state, and the truly “red” states of Mississippi and South Carolina.
Yet demographics may be more important than geography when it comes to this week’s Democratic victories.
Democrats won back their support of Black and Latino voters, which had eroded and helped Trump win the presidency. Independent voters who favored Trump last year also reversed course.
“Independent voters are swinging our way heavily,” Martin said.
Meanwhile, overwhelming support for Proposition 50 in California — which allows rare mid-decade redistricting in the state to counter efforts by the GOP to redraw other political maps — was also seen as a repudiation of Trump.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared on MinnPost and was written by Ana Radelat, MinnPost’s Washington, D.C., correspondent. It is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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