As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle

Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.

The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.

Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.

Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.

Mr. Wikler’s supporters include a host of D.N.C. officials who have been perturbed at Mr. Martin for creating a group of state party chairs that has competed within the national committee for influence. They say that the Wisconsinite, who turned his state party into a fund-raising juggernaut, is the more dynamic figure who managed to turn state elections, like a 2023 Supreme Court contest, into national causes.

At the same time, Democrats who are not directly involved in the D.N.C. race described the field to succeed the departing chair, Jaime Harrison, as uninspiring. Among the party’s top leaders, only Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has weighed in on the race (for Mr. Wikler). Some Democrats see the D.N.C. contenders’ arguments about relationships with donors and their regular promises of more money for state parties as papering over a broader discussion of why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election.

“Had Kamala or Biden made a call and said, ‘Look, we want to rally around X, Y and Z,’ I may have taken an interest in someone,” said Donna Brazile, a veteran D.N.C. member who has served in the past as interim party chair. “Other than giving state parties more resources, which is as old as the Republic itself, I haven’t heard anything new.”

Aides to President Biden and Ms. Harris declined to say whether either of them would back a candidate for party chair.

The post of D.N.C. chair is often described as one of the worst jobs in American politics — especially when Democrats do not hold the White House. Whoever wins the vote on Feb. 1 will be responsible for helping lead a party grappling with why it lost again to Donald J. Trump while keeping peace among a constellation of interest groups, donors, congressional committees, ambitious governors and state parties.

And when the 2028 presidential primary race begins in earnest, the D.N.C. chair will set the rules for the contest (including which state goes first and who qualifies for debates) and presumably try to remain neutral about whom Democrats choose as their nominee.

Mr. Martin now has endorsements from “well over 100” of the 448 members of the D.N.C., according to Justin Buoen, a campaign adviser. He entered the race in November claiming support from 83 members. Another candidate, former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, has the backing of “more than 60” D.N.C. members, according to a spokesman, Chris Taylor. And James Skoufis, a New York state senator, said he was “the first choice” of 23 D.N.C. members.

Mr. Wikler’s team has not revealed his whip count.

None of the candidates have released a list of members supporting them, and if multiple contenders remain in the race, it appears unlikely that anyone will receive the majority required to win the election on the first ballot — leaving candidates jockeying to be a second choice should voters recalibrate their options.

Four other candidates have also qualified for four party-sanctioned candidate forums scheduled for this month, as well as for the Feb. 1 ballot. They are Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security official in the Biden and Obama administrations; Marianne Williamson, the perennial presidential candidate; Quintessa Hathaway, who lost an Arkansas congressional race in 2022; and Jason Paul, a Massachusetts lawyer who self-published a book titled “Trench Warfare Politics in the Tinder Era.”

Jeff Weaver, who was a senior aide to Mr. Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential bids and to Representative Dean Phillips’s long-shot 2024 primary challenge to Mr. Biden, has argued to allies that Mr. Wikler is too tied to the party’s major donors.

Mr. Weaver has pointed in particular to the billionaire Reid Hoffman, whom he blames for Mr. Wikler’s attempt to keep Mr. Phillips off the Democratic presidential primary ballot last year in Wisconsin. The state’s Supreme Court subsequently ordered that Mr. Phillips’s name appear on the primary ballot, though he ended his campaign before Wisconsin voted.

“In my view, one of the most important roles of the new D.N.C. chair is to ensure we have a fair and open process in the 2028 Democratic primaries,” Mr. Weaver said. “We need to make sure we have someone at the D.N.C. who is a guardian of the fair process.”

Mr. Hoffman, who over the years has contributed millions of dollars to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is supporting Mr. Wikler, according to a person briefed on the billionaire’s deliberations.

Mr. Wikler’s other backers argue that he can help unite the party.

“The best thing about him, in my view, is he is a completely honest broker between the ideological factors in the party,” said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a centrist think tank that has backed Mr. Wikler and has a long relationship with Mr. Hoffman. “That has got to be the ideology of the D.N.C. chair: Get to 50 percent plus one, and then once you’re in office, go with God.”

And yet still others look at both Mr. Wikler and Mr. Martin and see party leaders who underperformed in 2024. Ms. Harris lost Wisconsin to Mr. Trump, and in solidly Democratic Minnesota, the party lost control of the Legislature because one Democrat elected to the State House was found not to be a resident of his district.

The D.N.C. chair occupies a high-profile position but answers to a very small electorate. The D.N.C. members who will vote on the post are party insiders elected from their states, ex officio members based on other offices they hold and at-large members appointed over the years by national chairs.

There is little utility to advertising or appearing on cable television: Several D.N.C. members pointed out that Mr. Wikler probably swayed more votes by appearing last month on a radio show in Fargo, N.D., that was hosted by one of North Dakota’s D.N.C. members than he did by going on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.

Yet some of the candidates’ messaging has not gone over well. Mr. Skoufis, an admitted long-shot candidate who has attacked the party and its strategies, sent holiday postcards to members. “Wishing you lots of cheer this holiday season” the front of the card read, and on the back: “Unless you’re a political consultant who’s been ripping off the D.N.C. Nothing but coal for them!”

Among those who received the postcards were D.N.C. members who have at times been on the party’s payroll and who were not amused.

Other attempts by supporters to sway the party vote have been discouraged. Some donors who organized efforts to call D.N.C. members on behalf of either Mr. Martin or Mr. Wikler were asked to stop for fear the work would backfire, according to a person briefed on the conversations.

“Nobody is really addressing the elephant in the room, which is we need to have a knock-down, drag-out fight about what the future is going to look like,” said Mr. Snyder, one of the long-shot candidates. “I haven’t met anybody with overbearing enthusiasm for the process or a particular candidate, Ben or Ken.”

Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting.