NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza on Thursday forecast that Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin’s short time in the role could be coming to its conclusion amid severe financial problems.
The DNC’s financial turmoil is so severe that top officials have deliberated about the possible need to borrow money, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. Cillizza argued on his “So What” Substack that the issues highlighted in the NYT article — including Martin’s dispute with David Hogg, a gun control activist who was elected to serve as one of the DNC’s vice chairs — are poor indicators for his future as DNC chair.
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“When you have a national party committee that is thinking about borrowing money to cover its bills — I’ve literally never heard of that before. And I’m old. I’ve been covering this a long time. It seems to me that this may be the end of the end for Ken Martin at the DNC,” Cillizza said. “I don’t know how you can continue if you’re in that bad a situation. There are major donors you still haven’t reached out to. You couldn’t get your house in order with David Hogg and that whole mess.”
During his short tenure under Martin, Hogg announced plans to primary some incumbent Democratic lawmakers, which Martin took issue with. The DNC voted on June 11 to oust Hogg from his vice chair position, Politico first reported.
“And now you have a giant piece in The New York Times detailing all of it. That’s not going to help you raise money. A piece in The New York Times — you know who reads The New York Times? Major donors to the Democratic National Committee,” Cillizza continued. “A piece that makes it look like it’s utter chaos, that you don’t know what you’re doing, that you spent the first six months of this year — rather than going after [President] Donald Trump and what he’s doing — trying to litigate these internal battles that you haven’t done all that well with.”
“I mean, it feels to me like this story may be kind of the bell tolls for thee when it comes to Ken Martin,” he said. “I don’t know how the Democratic Party continues on in this way, given that the party badly needs a leader who is helping it rebuild at the DNC.”
The DNC currently lags significantly behind the Republican National Convention (RNC) in finances, according to the NYT. The DNC entered May with $18 million cash on hand, while the RNC entered the month with $67.4 million.
“I just don’t know how you stay on. If you can’t raise money from major donors to fund the party with Donald Trump in the White House, and given what Donald Trump has done in his first five months in the White House, I don’t know if you’re ever going to. So I think Ken Martin has probably reached the end here,” Cillizza added. “I don’t know if he knows it yet. Maybe the people around him don’t know it yet. But man, I don’t know how you — given everything, all the water under the bridge in these first five months — how you weather a story like this one in The New York Times that makes clear that you don’t really know what you’re doing.”
“Because if you can’t raise the money to pay the bills — much less get the party going again, back on its feet — I mean, that is malpractice. Campaign malpractice 101,” he said. “And if you’re a Democratic leader or want to be a Democratic leader, you cannot have another six months, or even three months, or maybe even another month that looked like these first six months of the DNC. So I think Ken Martin’s days are very numbered.”
The DNC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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