DNC chair candidate Martin O’Malley says Democrats need to learn from “very bad loss”

Martin O’Malley has the kind of experience that would typically benefit a Democrat who wants to guide the party’s future after devastating losses in the last election.  

He’s a former governor, former mayor and a 2016 presidential candidate who until recently was serving in President Biden’s administration. Yet O’Malley is facing a difficult path in the race to try and become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee as the party reckons with the reality that key pockets of voters turned against it. 

Vital to O’Malley’s attempt is a campaign platform, first reported by CBS News, that calls for reconnecting the Democratic Party “to the kitchen table of every American family.” 

“We suffered a very bad loss,” O’Malley said in an interview, urging Democrats “to learn from it in order to win the next battles ahead.” 

His vision is centered on a 57-state and territory strategy along with plans to give campaigns “world-class AI tools for voter outreach, research, communications, and financial management, eliminating barriers to effective campaigning.” O’Malley’s pitch is also focused on “re-investing in direct voter registration,” as part of his pledge for the party to make “voter protection and registration the pillars of the change we need to win.” 

Democrats weathered a chaotic election cycle in 2024, punctuated by the push within the party to convince Mr. Biden to end his reelection run after a dismal debate performance in June. While Mr. Biden eventually ended his bid in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of the ticket, the 107-day sprint that followed resulted in Democrats losing the White House and Senate while failing, albeit narrowly, to win control of the House. 

Now the party is essentially leaderless and preparing for an emboldened Donald Trump to return to Washington, where he’ll be able to benefit from Republicans’ unified control of Congress and the White House. Those dynamics will be well in play at the time of the election for DNC chair on Feb. 1 given the unease among Democrats that has been abundantly clear in the weeks following the presidential election.

“I want to see someone who doesn’t come from the Washington circuit, who actually has been out there in the tissue of the country,” Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a battleground district Democrat, said of the DNC chair race. 

Failure can mean opportunity. The party’s struggles means O’Malley, as well as other ambitious Democrats, have a chance to become the next chair and carry wide ranging influence during a critical time for the party as it looks to regain ground in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. For all his apparent vulnerabilities, Trump was far more successful in this election than ever before, winning all seven presidential battlegrounds. Whether what happened in 2024 will become a tangible turning point for Democrats is likely to loom over the chair race in the coming weeks. 

“That’s the big shift that’s happened with this election going the wrong way on us,” O’Malley said. “We’re now in a mode of needing a changemaker, not a caretaker.” 

Among those running for chair, Ken Martin, the leader of Minnesota’s arm of the Democratic Party and a DNC vice chair, as well as Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, are seen as frontrunners. Martin has deep relationships within the DNC and can boast a statewide winning streak for candidates in Minnesota, while Wikler carries the political gravitas of helping lead the party in one of the nation’s seven presidential battlegrounds. 

Earlier this month, Martin announced a framework which includes his drive for a “Democratic infrastructure in all 3,244 counties,” across the country, as well as taking on the branding problem evident from the 2024 election results. 

“The majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites,” Martin said in his framework. “It’s a damning indictment on our party brand. We must be willing to dig deep and recenter the Democratic agenda to unite families across race, age, background, and class.” 

During a brief pitch to party leaders at a meeting in Washington D.C. last week where Martin and O’Malley also spoke, Wikler told his fellow Democrats “we need to build the battle plan to change how we communicate, so we show what we mean when we say we fight for working folks.”  

This isn’t the first time O’Malley has been linked to leading the party. Days after the 2016 election, he posted on social media that despite encouragement, he would not run for chair. Eight years later, he’s navigating a short window to make his case as he emphasizes his lengthy career in politics. 

Both Martin and Wikler were deeply involved in the 2024 cycle, and voting to lead the DNC will take place a little under three months removed from Election Day. That dynamic is among the challenges O’Malley faces as he tries to quickly build support among the DNC’s relatively small base of voting members. While O’Malley can tout his experience in elected office, both Martin and Wikler are able to point to their work helping lead their respective state parties in 2020 and the crucial elections that happened over the last four years.

But if Democrats are eager to distance themselves broadly from what played out in the last election, O’Malley may be able to capitalize in an attempt to be seen as more of an outsider than his main competitors. And around a month after his bid began, O’Malley’s campaign is adamant that he is making a compelling case that is resonating. 

“As it stands today, we know Gov. O’Malley has earned the endorsement of nearly four dozen DNC Members,” a campaign spokesman said, adding that ahead of the Feb. 1 contest “we have the momentum in this race.”

O’Malley served as mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 and went on to win two terms as governor of Maryland, which included a stint leading the Democratic Governors Association. His political power has faded since then however, illustrated most notably by the struggles he faced during his campaign for president in the 2016 Democratic primary. Before announcing his run for chair, O’Malley spent nearly a year working in the federal government as commissioner of Social Security.  

That experience is intertwined in O’Malley’s platform, which also calls for creating “a feedback loop for our local and state elected officials to ensure that they can help inform our messaging and tactics.” 

“We all know we need to restore our credibility,” O’Malley said. “We need to learn from our failings, as well as our candidates who succeeded. But only one of us [in the race for DNC chair] has actually proven an ability to effectuate a rapid turnaround like we need to do right now in order to win the next election.” 

Anne Bryson and

Fin Gómez

contributed to this report.