Upcoming DNC Election Will Set Democratic Party’s Course on Palestine and More

The Democratic Party, still reeling from its resounding loss to Donald Trump and the Republicans, will try to set a new course for the party at the Democratic National Committee’s upcoming winter meeting.

This will be no small task; the party just endured a chaotic presidential campaign that saw the sitting president opt not to run for reelection after considerable pressure from inside the party, resulting in the summary nomination of the vice president. During President Biden’s tenure, Democrats were also riven by internal divisions over party leadership’s diehard support for its octogenarian standard-bearer, and by the party mainstream’s backing of Israel’s onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza. The Democratic National Convention in August saw mass demonstrations against the Biden administration’s support for the genocide in Gaza, echoing the social unrest that attended the DNC in 1968.

Now, Democrats will need to find a way to move forward from a bruising two years that, at times, appeared to threaten the party’s very existence, and look to the daunting job ahead: combating Donald Trump and his ultra-right agenda for the U.S. Although internal party meetings are not followed with the same ardor as presidential primaries, the election of party officers, especially that of DNC chair, will give as strong an indicator as any yet about how the Democratic Party plans to approach Donald Trump’s second term.

While not closely watched outside of the political trade press, the DNC chair election can be hugely consequential for the direction of the party. DNC chairs, and other officers, are elected by members of the DNC, not by registered voters, so these elections closely reflect and shape internal Democratic Party politics. Despite this small and specific electorate, the DNC chair is vested with significant power in determining the party’s direction. The chair often acts as a go-between for major donors and electeds, and is responsible for much of the resource allocation that comes with raising large amounts of money. The chair’s determination of who gets what resources, and in what quantity, can be a significant marker of the overall political direction the party is taking.

Because this role is so critical, it often is attended by controversy. In 2016, for example, then-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned after a trove of emails released by WikiLeaks appeared to show her and other DNC officials colluding to advance Hillary Clinton’s primary candidacy ahead of Bernie Sanders’ in what had become an unexpectedly competitive contest. The substantiated allegation that DNC officials, who are supposed to remain neutral in primaries, had conspired to help one candidate defeat another confirmed the worst fears that some inside the party had long held about the committee’s opaque modus operandi.

More recently, current chair Jaime Harrison has come under fire for what some party members and activists saw as overt favoritism toward Joe Biden and the moderate wing of the party. Criticisms of Harrison crystallized around the party’s controversial decision to change the 2024 primary calendar. Harrison was a prominent advocate for advancing South Carolina, a state in which Joe Biden was heavily favored, to the beginning of the Democrats’ primary season, displacing New Hampshire. The move was seen as an attempt to stymie any momentum that other candidates in the race hoped to generate.

Harrison’s unsteady relationship with the party’s left flank never abated, and as he prepares to depart the position, he has volleyed some parting shots at progressives in the party, especially Bernie Sanders. In the wake of November’s election loss, Sanders criticized the party for “abandon[ing] working class people.” Harrison called Sanders’s judgment “straight up BS” and went on to enumerate Biden’s “pro-worker” bona fides.

Given this recent history of party chairships, many DNC members and those close to party operations have called for a compromise candidate who can unite ideological factions of the party, especially as it heads into, at a minimum, two years of Republican trifecta control of the White House and Congress.

Among those emerging as frontrunners for the seat are Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, both of whom can claim some momentum in the race. Martin is the current chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the effective Democratic Party in Minnesota) and boasts that he has received the endorsement of at least 100 of the about 450 members of the DNC. Wikler, who is chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, has overcome a comparatively late entry into the race by making himself visible to an audience far beyond voting members of the DNC, culminating in his appearance, in December, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. More recently, Wikler received the endorsement of former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, arguably the most prominent member of the party to endorse any DNC chair candidate thus far.

Another candidate who appears to be surging to the front of the pack is Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, who third-wheeled his way through the bruising 2016 primary alongside Clinton and Sanders. O’Malley just received the backing of several prominent current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which will surely keep him in the conversation heading into the end of January.

Alongside the three presumptive frontrunners is a slew of other candidates, some of whom have never won an election with the Democratic Party. This group includes Marianne Williamson, the outré presidential candidate who ran in both the 2020 and 2024 presidential primaries. Williamson, who initially made her name as a New Age author and spiritual leader, recently announced that she had the support of enough DNC members to make the ballot for chair elections. Williamson, whose candidacy is a long shot, is running on a platform familiar to any who have followed her multiple runs for president, emphasizing the party’s affective connection to voters’ lives. Promising “a party that listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets,” she sent an open letter to the DNC in which she encouraged members to understand the “psychological and emotional dimensions” of Donald Trump’s appeal in order to “create the energy to counter it.”

While approximating the level of support each candidate has is relatively straightforward, figuring out what each person’s election would mean for the Democratic Party is another task entirely. Despite her long odds, Williamson’s open letter represents one of the more developed candidate platforms that are publicly available for DNC chair candidates.

O’Malley has a comprehensive campaign website, but it is mostly focused on process, not on the policies that he would encourage the party to adopt under his leadership. Wikler has followed a similar tack, with a campaign site that encourages the party to maintain a big tent approach but has few details beyond that. Martin does not have a campaign site at all, and has elaborated his platform via a memo his team circulated to DNC members.

All this leaves observers with, by way of assessment, is each candidate’s past record. Martin is a longtime denizen of the Democratic Party who has worked on numerous presidential campaigns since 2000 and was known in Minnesota for his powerhouse fundraising capabilities. Despite his insider status, he is billing himself as an outsider who is not “a creature of D.C.” While that may be technically true, Martin’s longstanding relationship with the party means he is likely to shy away from ushering in radical reforms.

Wikler, running as a modestly more progressive candidate than Martin, has been endorsed by well-known left-of-center groups like MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. However, he is also supported by the staunchly centrist group Third Way, leaving some mystery about how each group thinks it can advance its politics with Wikler at the helm. During his time in Wisconsin, he oversaw significant gains for Democrats in the state house, a fact that he has made a substantial part of his candidacy.

O’Malley has the longest record of public service of the three, having served on the Baltimore City Council, as mayor of Baltimore, and as governor of Maryland. Once viewed as a progressive within the Democratic Party, O’Malley has more recently been at loggerheads with the party’s left wing. After his failed presidential run in 2016, O’Malley was openly contemptuous of Bernie Sanders and his politics, calling them a “scam.” Whether this rejection of the Sanders platform would inform his tenure as chair is less clear.

Some of the most policy-specific statements the leading candidates have made is around Israel’s war on Gaza, and specifically on the question of whether Democrats should have allowed Palestinian American Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman to speak at the Democratic National Convention. In August, she was denied the opportunity to speak, despite petitioning from the Uncommitted Movement.

Martin and Wikler both criticized the decision after the fact, saying they believed Romman should have been allowed to speak. O’Malley, conversely, agreed with the decision to bar Romman from the podium, placing him distinctly to the right on the issue. When he ran for president, O’Malley was supportive of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine but he has also said that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” a slogan that has been criticized for appearing to broadly excuse all Israeli military action.

There may be shoes yet to drop, too. The deadline for DNC chair candidates to qualify is not until January 25, and some well-known party operatives appear to still be entertaining a run. Most prominent among these is Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who also served as Barack Obama’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2010. Emanuel is particularly reviled by the party’s left and by civil rights activists. During his time as mayor of Chicago, Emanuel notoriously covered up the police killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager murdered by Chicago police officers. He also challenged the Chicago Teachers Union, sparking a massive strike in 2012 that left deep rifts between Emanuel and organized labor.

Outside of his time in Chicago, Emanuel is also well-known for his steadfast support for Israel. His father was a member of a Zionist paramilitary organization known for attacking Palestinian towns in the decades before the Israeli state was declared, and Emanuel himself was a civilian volunteer in the Israeli military. In August, while he was serving as ambassador to Japan, Emanuel skipped the annual atomic bomb memorial commemoration in Nagasaki because the city decided not to invite Israel. Despite this laundry list of potentially disqualifying characteristics, Emanuel’s long history and deep ties within the party may make him just the kind of candidate capable of capturing the DNC’s unique electorate.

Whatever the outcome of the party officer elections, many registered Democrats may not begin to feel the impacts of these decisions until the 2028 Democratic presidential primary begins to ramp up. In the meantime, the new DNC chair will be faced with a daunting task: holding the Democratic Party together amid ongoing internal tension while simultaneously presenting a united front against Donald Trump and his band of crony capitalists and neo-fascists.