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Ken Martin

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Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25

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So I have to admit that I have my own white privilege here. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing the phobias that exist throughout our communities, both in Minnesota and, frankly, throughout this country.

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Well, let me just start by saying thanks for having me. And isn't it a little crazy that this race is coming down to two middle-aged white guys from the Midwest with three-letter first names? Ken and Ben. Who would have thought, right?

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No, it's great. And Ben's a wonderful friend. He's doing great things in Wisconsin, for sure. Look, you know, for me, I've always said being a party chair is the political equivalency of being a fire hydrant, right? You get pissed on by everyone. Like you said, you get none of the credit when you win, all the blame when you lose.

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And of course, if you're doing your job the right way, you're saying no more than you're saying yes. So by the time it's over, you have far fewer friends. So I'm eyes wide open about this. I've been the chair of the Minnesota DFL the last 14 years, came in

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to this job right after the disastrous midterm elections in 2010 where we suffered you know throughout the country as you remember John one of the worst shellacans we faced as a party in in years and that was true in Minnesota we lost a 40-year senate majority we lost the state house

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We lost the longest held congressional seat in Congress in the Eighth District with Jim Overstar, and many races up and down the ballot. I happened to help run a campaign for governor that year where we were successful in getting Mark Dayton elected by just 8,750 votes.

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And so to your point, I mean, we had to at that point, the morale was low, the finger pointing was high, the name calling, the blaming, people, the morale was so low and people were fleeing the party, right? All of our stakeholders, donors, progressive partners and allies, candidates, no one wanted anything to do with the party.

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And what it took is when I came in as party chair, it took someone to be able to bring all those groups back to the table and realize if we're going to build power again, We had to figure out a plan to win. And we did that. And we got back in power within two years. And we haven't lost since.

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And we're in a similar moment right now, right, where there's low morale, a lot of finger pointing, a lot of people trying to place blame. I'm, by the way, not here to win the argument. I want us to win elections again. And that's what we've done in Minnesota. And so there's a lot of reasons why I'm running. I'm very clear-eyed about what this job isn't. It's not a pathway to glory.

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For people thinking that this is a pathway to relevancy, it really isn't that either. The next DNC chair has to focus relentlessly on building the infrastructure throughout this country to put us on a path to win again. And so that's why I'm running.

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I think both are accurate, right? They're both accurate. It was a close election, right? And we think about the presidential race, 114,000 vote swing of three battleground states. And we'd be talking about a Kamala Harris presidency right now. Same with the House races, right? 7,000 votes between three battleground districts. We'd be talking about Speaker Jeffries. So it was a close election.

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But there's no doubt that what you said, the second part of that is absolutely accurate. We lost ground with big parts of our coalition. And there's a whole host of reasons for that. Many of them we don't know at this point. Of course we know we lost ground with Latino voters. We lost ground with younger voters. We lost ground with working class households, with women.

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We lost ground with every demographic group with just a couple, and I'll get to that in a moment. But the reality is that we have to figure out the how and why we lost ground. We have to look at ad spend. We have to look at messaging. We have to look at our organizing tactics, right? Before we're too prescriptive with the solutions, we have to really dig into why those groups left us.

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And I would say one of the big lessons from this last election was the spring of 2024, there was research that came out that showed for the first time in American history, the perceptions of the two political parties have actually changed.

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The majority of Americans now feel that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is a party of the wealthy and the elites. And the only two groups, by the way, Just to prove the point that we actually over-performed with, we're wealthy households and college-educated voters. That is a damning indictment, John, on who we are.

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That's not who we are as a party. We have always been the party that's fought for the working class and the poor. We've always been the party that's fought for the oppressed and marginalized. And so we have a lot of work to do, right? And it's not going to change overnight.

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And the other thing we need to acknowledge, and you know this, you've been involved for a long time, this wasn't a singular occurrence, all those groups leaving us. This has been happening underneath our nose for some time. And we have to stem the tide and reverse the tide. We need to get those groups to come back to us.

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Well, I'll use some personal examples of that. My brother, who's a union carpenter, he voted for Obama in 8 and 12, and Trump in 16, 20, and 24, right? My father-in-law is a beef cattle farmer in southern Minnesota. Same thing, voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. So we know that there are people who are moving away from our party. And I think part of the challenge- Did you ask them why?

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What was the change? Each of them had different reasons, right? And I'm happy to get into them. But I think the larger point you're making is that we have continued to lose ground with non-college educated voters. And part of that is, I believe, we've allowed our party to essentially devolve into smaller and smaller messages, right? To appeal to- different parts of our really big tent coalition.

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And as a result, we've lost the narrative, right? We've lost the thing that connects all of the disparate parts of our coalition. And what is that? Well, I'll tell you. Paul Wellstone, my first boss in politics, understood this. He understood that what connected a corn farmer in Southern Minnesota with a steel worker on the Iron Range and a new refugee in the Twin Cities was economics, right?

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kitchen table issues, bread and butter issues that at the end of the day, people are worried about. And let me just give you an example of this. For me, when we talk about working people and labor as an example, we just talked about this the other night, too many people feel like we only show up when we're asking them for their vote.

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And then we never deliver on the promises we make to actually make a difference in their lives. I think we, last year, we were defending the Biden economy, of course, and it was a great economy. One of the best economies we've seen in years, right? From a GDP perspective, a job growth perspective, from unemployment and real wage growth.

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But the reality is, as we were trying to defend Joe Biden and talk about all these things, we were ignoring the pain that average everyday working people in this country were facing, right? By working class, by the way, it's not code for white people. For me, we know that the working class in this country is black, brown, and white people who are working their asses off.

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working harder than they ever have, can barely afford their lives, right? And when gas prices are high and grocery prices are high, and we're talking to them about the GDP, we've already lost them because we're not acknowledging the economic pain that they're facing. So for me, part of this is getting back to the narrative that connects all parts of our Big Ten coalition, right?

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And that is a working class agenda that unites everyone, whether you're a corn farmer or you're a new refugee in the Twin Cities.

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Well, first, you need to figure out what that brand is. And I think that should be a working class, focusing on a working class agenda, right? So, but even We need to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about specifically what that looks like as it relates to the policy prescription. But let me tell you why I don't think it's an abandonment of our message or our policy agenda, right?

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Think about Missouri. They passed a minimum wage increase, paid family leave, and abortion protections all by wide margins, yet those same voters went down the ballot and voted for Trump and the Republicans. It seems to me that we see these issues, they're very popular throughout the country, passing in ballot initiative and referenda by wide margins. They're very popular, right?

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Yet those same voters aren't necessarily connecting the dots between the issues that they support that will actually make a difference in their lives and are Democratic candidates. So that's not a message problem. It's a messaging problem. We're clearly not connecting the dots for voters.

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And so let me back up to one of the other lessons we've learned in this election is that the Republicans have done a much better job than Democrats on competing in this new information environment. right? And this is the other challenge we have. We allowed the Republican Party to define us before we ever started to define ourselves. Think about this.

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They started right after the 20 election, John, as you know. The Republican Party started beating the hell out of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in all of these non-traditional information spaces, right? And you've heard a lot of folks talk about it, gaming platforms, podcasts, streaming services, right? even online dating apps, for God's sake.

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Anywhere there's an online community, the Republicans were paying micro-influencers to essentially spew out their misinformation and disinformation. And we didn't start in any real way our communications infrastructure until the election year.

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We have to realize we need a permanent campaign, not only a permanent organizing campaign that's talking to voters year round, but also a permanent communications infrastructure that is not waiting until we get to an election cycle to start communicating with voters. We got beat to the punch by the Republicans who realized that we live in a new information environment where it's 24-7, 365.

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And that's where we got our Buds kit. So for us, part of this is, of course, the brand. The other part is how we're messaging. The other part of it is making sure we realize 40% of Americans say they avoid the news at all costs, right? Yet they're getting barraged by information. And you know this better than probably anyone, John.

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They're getting barraged by information all the time on their phones. So we have to be more sophisticated in how we message and when we stand up all of our operations.

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What I would say is I agree with you that we should be in all those spaces, right? And we shouldn't be afraid to go on Joe Rogan's show or on Fox. We should be confident enough in both our values and, of course, our message that we go wherever we need to. You know, people ask me, I'm a hunter. They ask me where I'm going to go hunt, right?

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And they think I'm going to give them my favorite hunting spot or, you know, say I'm going to the woods. No, I go where the deer are, right? And you know this. We need to go where voters are. And, you know, this idea that, you know, we have consultants in D.C. still spending or steering so much of our ad spend to broadcast TV. I mean, shoot, I'm 51 years old, John, right? I'm an old man.

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I still read a hard copy of a newspaper, but the one thing I don't do is watch broadcast TV. I don't know anyone my age that watches broadcast TV, yet we still keep spending so much money on outdated tactics, right? Of course, I know why, because people make all their money there, but that's wrong. If we want to win again, we need to realize we need to go where voters are getting their information.

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And so that's half the battle, right? And I think that also means we can't be afraid to go to spaces By the way, you're not going on Fox News to appeal to Republican voters, right? You're going on Fox News to appeal to independent voters, right? You're going on Joe Rogan to appeal to nonpartisans and independents, not to just talk to Republicans that happen to be on there.

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So I understand people when they try to criticize someone for saying, well, why would you go on Fox News? You're just going there to try to win over Republican voters? No. That's not the point. There's a lot of people who listen to Fox News that aren't Republicans that we should, you know, give them the countervailing opinion.

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I think part of the challenge with social media right now is given your algorithm, you're only fed the information that you want to see. And so, so many Americans are in this information bubble that they're only getting fed the information they want. And we have to try to find ways to break through that.

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And that means appearing on environments and in platforms that might not make sense to the Democratic Party, but makes sense to cut through the noise and give people a sense of what the other side actually believes.

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Well, here's what I would say. State party chairs don't have the luxury to just focus on one race, right? We can't just focus on the governor's race or the top of the ticket. We have to focus on the state legislature as well, as well as other down ballot races for city council, school boards, county boards, et cetera.

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And so one of my critiques of the Democratic Party, especially the DNC, is that they focus way too much on federal races. Of course, we've got to win back Congress, the Senate, and the presidency. It's not an either or. But we can't be a national party that just focuses on seven battleground states, right? And and some federal races.

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We've got to be more prescriptive and holistic about how to build power around this nation. That's one thing, again, that the conservative movement in this country realizes. They're not just focused on federal races. They're also focused on school boards, right? And we've seen the dangerous result of our indifference of actually

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investing in trying to compete in every race in this country as a national party when the conservative movement has taken over school boards and they're banning books and whitewashing history and attacking our children. We cannot afford as a national party to ignore these public policy arenas anymore and so

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One thing state party chairs can teach the national party is that you have to compete everywhere. The second piece is you have to make sure that you're actually building coalitions and bringing partners into that conversation, right? And part of that, to me, state parties don't have the luxury to do this work alone because they're some of the most under-resourced entities in politics.

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We don't get enough funding from either the national party or from others We are usually the last people getting funding. So that means we actually have to be smart in how we spend our money and then build coalitions with allies and organizations on the ground who are working in electoral spaces to elect people who share our values. And so

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The third thing I would say that state parties do that the national party doesn't do, which drives me crazy, is state parties don't just focus on one election cycle. We have to build infrastructure that is beyond just the upcoming election cycle. We have to look to 26, 28, 30, and beyond, right? This is one of the things that I have in my plan. I want to write a 10-year plan for the DNC.

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People think I'm crazy to say that, but the reality is we have to not be myopically focused on just this election cycle because what that means is then we're recreating the infrastructure every two or four years as a national party. Look, we are part of a movement, of course, of people who are fighting for social justice and economic justice. But political parties have one very clear role, right?

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It is our only role, and it is to win elections. But to do that, you have to build long-lasting and durable infrastructure that sees beyond just one election cycle. And if you'll allow me to use a hockey analogy, because I'm from Minnesota, and Wayne Gretzky, the great one right there in LA, said once that you have to skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is, right?

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Yet our party just keeps skating to where the puck is. Who's looking at the fact that in 2030, our map is gonna completely change underneath of us as all the power shifts to the south and the Southwest. And who's preparing for that moment right now as we go into 25 and 26? It should be the National Party that has a longer-term lens for this work and a longer-term arc on how we do that.

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So I guess those are the three things that state parties are doing that the National Party's not doing.

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I take no credit for it. But let me say this. We've had wonderful candidates on the ballot. I mean, I will never claim credit for their victory. But what I do claim some amount of credit for is building infrastructure that they've relied on, right? We've built probably the strongest state party in the nation. I'm sure...

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There's others that would disagree, but both from fundraising and building the infrastructure on the ground. Our candidates, for instance, all of them, from Governor Walz to Senator Klobuchar to local candidates, they rely on our party's infrastructure. Our turnout machine is... is second to none, right?

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In terms of IDing and persuading, mobilizing voters, we always have the top voter turnout in the nation. If not, we're number two or number three. Most importantly is that our candidates don't have to build that infrastructure themselves. They can rely on the state party to actually run the field program so they don't have to do that. And I think that's why we've been winning, right?

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I mean, there's a lot of reasons. I mean, but the other part of winning is the fact that our party and our elected officials are delivering on the promises they made to voters, right? And

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There's no greater example of that than what Tim Walz and our legislative leaders did with the trifecta the last two years to actually focus on an agenda that will help working people that are struggling in this state and then using the power they had when they had it to make a difference for those folks.

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I think part of the disillusionment, John, with American politics right now, as I mentioned earlier, is that folks hear people say one thing and then do another. You know, not to keep quoting Paul, but Paul used to say, you should never separate the life you lead from the words you speak. And people see too many politicians in both parties who stand up, right?

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Say one thing just to get your vote and then get into office and forget about them. That's why it was remarkable, I think, to see what we've done in Minnesota and in states like Michigan, two very purple states in the Midwest who both had slim majorities, and they led in a very aggressive way to deliver on those promises.

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Well, first is to focus on year-round organizing, a permanent campaign. You know, part of the challenge and why we keep losing ground with folks, as I mentioned earlier, is we're only showing up three months before an election and asking for a vote. So the first is a year round organizing, standing up, organizing all the time. So we never stopped having conversations with voters at their door.

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You know, the first conversation we have with the voter should not be asking them to vote for us, but rather What are your hopes and dreams, your aspirations for your community, right? And over time, build trust and earn their trust so we can actually ask them for their vote. Second thing I would do is really contest every race up and down the ballot, right?

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We can't be a party just focused on federal races, right? And I get why Jamie had to do it. And they did a lot of great work over the four years he was there and the infrastructure involved. is much stronger than it was after the 16 election, as an example. But I would say this for me. We need a permanent campaign.

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We need to start our organizing and our communications infrastructure much earlier than we ever have. And we have to make sure that we are competing up and down the ballot. in partnership with all of our 57 state parties all throughout the country. So, you know, the other thing I would do differently, and I just rolled this out this week, is build a national coordinated campaign table, right?

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We haven't had a national coordinated campaign at the DNC since the mid-90s. And that's a shame because we're not tapping into... What does that look like? Could you...

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Well, for me, a coordinated campaign is really bringing, just like we do in Minnesota, bringing our electoral partners and elected officials together at a table that would include allies and partners like labor and reproductive rights groups and environmental groups. We have all of these great organizations that are working in electoral spaces.

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spending time, energy, and money, right, fighting for economic and social justice, fighting for our party and our candidates who are never engaged in that conversation, right? They're siloed off and they should be brought into the conversation and we should build one plan together where we coordinate our resources and really focus like a laser on how we build power together, right?

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Unfortunately, right now, we have all these disparate groups out there doing their own things. It results in a lot of duplication of effort. And frankly, it does not result in us being strategically aligned in a way that helps us all accomplish the same goals, which is to elect people who share our values to office so we can actually move our agenda forward.

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Yeah, I mean, I think this is a very good question, right? And the reality is that you have to be intentional about this. And you have to make sure that your donors know that for us to actually turn the page here and build power, we have to have a more holistic approach on it. You can't just focus on seven battleground states, right?

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What will help us win the presidency is actually winning local races and winning state legislatures and winning gubernatorial races, right? So the reality is it's all connected. And the second piece is, yeah, we do have to grow the pie, right?

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And part of building a coordinated campaign where we're building a permanent campaign is realizing that we're stronger together and we should actually have shared resources where we're focus collectively on a plan to achieve the same goals.

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And so when you're so disjointed and you're spending money on when the left hand and the right hand aren't talking and coordinating, you're just duplicating effort and wasting resource. So for me, it's just being more holistic about it. And is it going to be a challenge? For sure. Because it won't be the way the DC consultants and others want it to be. We're going to flip the script.

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We're going to break up this cabal in D.C., and we're going to do things differently, right? And the model is states like Minnesota, states like Wisconsin, states like Michigan, right? States that are building here in the Midwest and winning, right, in very purple states by actually bringing people together and focusing more holistically.

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Look, if you want to keep losing, keep doing things the way they are. Now, as it relates to raising money, there's no state that's raised as much money as I have. In addition to raising $220 million for my state party, I served on the Harris-Walls Finance Committee, raised over $6 million for the presidential campaign, did the same thing in 2016.

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Raising money is not going to be a challenge for me. The most important thing is how we spend it. And if we're not spending it on winning, then we shouldn't be spending it. So here's to all those consultants in DC.

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I hope they're listening to me because if you bring me a plan that doesn't help us win elections, you're going to have to go pound sand because you're not going to get a contract from the DNC. And that's how we built it here. And it's important not just to help us win, but it's important for those donors who are giving us money to have a sense on how the DNC chair is going to approach this.

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We're not going to invest in things that don't help us win elections. No more contracts to just line consultants' pockets. As I've said, I'm here to win the U.S. House back, not help a consultant build a new house.

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Well, look, I mean, this is a little bit of a challenging one because I do want to get dark money out of politics. I've long supported Ending Citizens United and making sure that we find a way to actually overhaul the campaign finance system so these campaigns and elections aren't as expensive. I mean, we've spent $2.5 billion on a presidential campaign, over $10 billion, by the way, John,

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just in 2024 spent on the Democratic side alone. It's obscene, right? And we've got to reverse course somehow. And part of that, of course, is getting money out of politics generally. But when we say corporations, right, it's a very large term. And this is where I start to get the devil's in the details.

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Because technically, by the IRS, our labor partners and some of our reproductive rights groups and others are corporations, right? So what are we actually using to define corporations? And what I would say is bad corporate actors who don't share our values, the DNC should not be taking their money. I've been very clear on that. And we don't take that type of money here in Minnesota, and we won't.

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And I think at the DNC, the DNC has to live its values. Where there are bad corporate actors who, again, who don't share the Democratic Party's values, the Democratic Party should not only not take their money, they should be calling out people who do.

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You know, I think there's a lot. You know, Maxwell Frost down in Florida. I think Peggy Flanagan here in Minnesota, you know, our lieutenant governor. There's a great guy who was just elected as the mayor of Tulsa, Monroe Nichols, who's a former state representative, right? first African-American mayor. I think Sarah McBride in Delaware, who's a great friend.

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And there's a lot of wonderful leaders that, I think there's an amazing bench we have in the Democratic Party, right? We've got these great governors like Andy Beshear and Wes Moore and Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer, right? We've got, and your governor, of course, Gavin Newsom. We've got an amazing bench.

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But, you know, as I look at this, we've got wonderful Democratic electeds throughout this country that are serving in office right now that don't get the attention they deserve. Because, again, we're focused on all the big names, you know, the big governors and, of course, the members of Congress. But there are some amazing leaders serving in local offices that we should be paying attention to.

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I do them all the time. And it's part of your role as a state party chair, right? And certainly in my role at the ASDC as a vice chair of the DNC, I've done lots of national media. But it's not an either or, right? Frankly, I would say we've got this great bench of elected officials, many of them I just talked about, that we should be showcasing and using more, frankly. And

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um you know the if folks think that the democratic the next chair of the democratic party is a savior that there's someone riding in to save the party that's the wrong mentality right i have a plaque in my office that says none of us are as smart as all of us and mark dayton gave that to me i believe it at the end of the day no one has all the answers right but the reality is is we have this amazingly rich party of people with great professional experiences and lived experiences that we should be tapping into and that includes

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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?

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spokespeople, right? I believe we've got mayors. Who better to talk about public safety than mayors throughout the country, right? Who better to talk about, you know, natural disasters like what we're seeing in LA right now than county commissioners and leaders who have to deal with that? Who better to talk about transportation funding and education funding than governors.

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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?

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And so I think we have many spokespeople and the DNC is not the only person who should be the spokesperson for our party. But I do think what we need is someone that's going to be really focused on organizing. Right now what this moment needs is someone who can both get the message out but frankly, focusing on building the foundation we need and the infrastructure we need to win.

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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?

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Because that's one of the lessons from this last election is clearly our comms infrastructure and our organizing infrastructure is not being utilized the way it should. And it's not being built in a way where it's permanent. And it's part of actually moving and persuading voters.