Chair Ken Martin: One Year Later, Ready for 2026 and Beyond
DNC Chair Ken Martin reflects on one year since beginning his term.
FROM: Ken Martin, DNC Chair
DATE: February 2, 2026
This week marks one year since I began my term as Chair of the DNC. It comes at a deeply disturbing moment for our country and my home state of Minnesota in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by masked federal agents, who continue to spread chaos and violence in Minneapolis and across the country.
These are dark times, but I am buoyed by how Minnesotans and the entire country are responding to this crisis. Every day, we see people finding ways to stand up against this corrupt administration, and together, we can harness this energy to both organize and mobilize voters to the polls to hold Republicans accountable in 2026 and beyond.
This year, the DNC focused on building up our infrastructure in order to make this mobilization possible. We hit the ground running — my first priority as DNC Chair was to hit the road right away, visiting red, purple, and blue states as a part of my effort to get the DNC out of DC and to show that Democrats will organize everywhere in order to win anywhere. In the 33 states I visited in my first year, I saw Democrats from every part of the country fighting for our values and ready to elect Democrats in order to push back against this administration.
And over the past year, Democrats showed up. From Iowa to Georgia to New Jersey, Democrats across the country won or overperformed in nearly 90 percent of key elections since Trump was elected, with an average overperformance in special legislative elections of nearly 14 points. Just this weekend, Taylor Rehmet flipped a Trump +17 state senate seat in deep red Texas despite Republicans outspending his campaign 10-to-1. In November, Democrats delivered a Blue Sweep up and down the ballot, winning back voters and gaining ground in historically red places.
The DNC did more organizing and invested more money in winning these races than ever before in an off-year. We created new programs to train the next generation of organizers and to connect talented staff with campaigns and state parties. We chose to tackle our voter registration gap head-on, launching our largest-ever partisan national voter registration campaign in battleground states. When Republicans began their scheme to rig the congressional maps, we were there on day one to support Democrats going on offense and fighting back.
After a year on the job, I’ve seen the power of Democrats across the country and am excited to continue building our momentum through the midterms and beyond.
Winning on Affordability
Throughout 2025, voters sent a clear message: They’re fed up with Trump and Republicans’ broken promises. Donald Trump promised to lower costs on Day One of his presidency. Instead, his reckless economic policies have done the opposite, all while helping the already rich get richer. While Republicans have used their power to pass tax cuts for billionaires and rip health care away from millions of Americans, Democrats across the country ran strategic campaigns centered on making life more affordable, and the DNC was there to support them along the way.
Since Trump’s election, Democrats have won or overperformed in nearly 90 percent of key elections (240 out of 269).
From Abigail Spanberger to Mikie Sherrill to Zohran Mamdani, Democratic candidates won decisive victories because they focused their campaigns on bringing down costs.
Democrats are expanding the map in places we haven’t won in decades.
Taylor Rehmet flipped a Trump +17 Texas state senate seat by running a pro-worker, pro-union campaign focused on making life more affordable. The DNC supported Taylor Rehmet’s campaign by leveraging our distributed organizing program to recruit local volunteers and send GOTV texts to reach critical voters in the final stretch of the race.
Caitlin Drey flipped Iowa State Senate District 1. The DNC leveraged our Distributed volunteer base to turnout voters in the district.
James Malone became the first Democrat to win a State Senate election in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in over 130 years.
In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson became the first non-federal statewide Democrats to be elected in nearly 20 years.
The DNC invested $100,000 to support paid programming and volunteer organizing efforts to help Democrats in Mississippi flip two State Senate seats to break Republicans’ 13-year supermajority, and also flipped a seat in the State House.
In Pennsylvania, where the DNC spent $175,000 to support volunteer organizing efforts, Democrats swept every county seat in conservative Bucks County, including electing the area’s first-ever Democratic district attorney.
Since Trump took office, Democrats have flipped 26 state legislative seats red-to-blue. Republicans have flipped zero.
Democrats have the momentum. We are confident, but not complacent. For the past 90 years, when Democrats have swept the New York City mayor’s office and the governor’s mansions in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats have won the majority in the House the following year.
Investing and Organizing Everywhere
In 2025, the DNC conducted our largest off-year organizing blitz ever and invested more than ever before in off-year elections. Heading into the midterms and beyond, we’re continuing to invest in party infrastructure in order to supercharge our organizing efforts so we can win anywhere.
Under the new State Party Partnership Program, the DNC delivers a monthly transfer of more than $1 million to state parties every single month — the committee’s largest investment into Democratic state parties in history.
Through the DNC’s Red State Fund, chronically underfunded state parties in Republican-controlled states are receiving an additional investment of $5,000 a month.
During “Organizing Summer,” the DNC hosted 150 events in 50 states, signed up over 15,000 volunteers to action this summer alone, and contacted 1,650,000 voters.
When Republicans refused to meet face to face with their constituents, the DNC held town halls in those districts across the country with Senators Mark Kelly, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Ruben Gallego, and Chris Murphy and Representatives Maxwell Frost, Yassamin Ansari, Jamie Raskin, Madeleine Dean, and Greg Casar.
Across New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and California in 2025, the DNC helped Democratic coordinated campaigns recruit and train over 17,000 volunteers, knock on over 2.5 million doors, make over 8.5 million phone calls, and send over 17 million texts to get out the vote for Democrats.
Democrats dominated in New Jersey and Virginia, where Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger sailed to victory and Democrats flipped 13 State House seats. The DNC invested close to $7 million to help hire organizers, talk to voters early, and fund voter persuasion programs, resulting in a historic shift in Black, Latino, and young voters to Democratic candidates that moved away from the Democratic Party in 2024.
Taking on Big Fights
Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters and rig the congressional maps because voters are rejecting their unpopular agenda. The DNC is no longer bringing a pencil to a knife fight — we’re going on offense. While Republicans started this redistricting battle, Democrats are now expected to end up on top.
When Republicans started this redistricting fight in Texas, the DNC supported Texas House Democrats who fled the state to break quorum. We sent over 250,000 texts encouraging voters to speak out against voter disenfranchisement at field hearings and marshaled 30,000 volunteers to reach persuadable Republican voters.
In California, the DNC launched a bilingual national volunteer recruitment campaign to recruit hundreds of Spanish-speaking supporters to make calls and knock on doors in support of Prop. 50 in California.
The DNC is also fighting in court to protect voter privacy, filing amicus briefs in five states fighting back against the DOJ’s unlawful attempt to seize state voter rolls and sending warning letters to ten states urging them not to enter into agreements to send their unredacted voter files to the DOJ and purge eligible voters from the rolls in violation of federal law.
Training the Next Generation
Training the next generation of Democrats to be strong organizers and effective leaders in their communities will help us win in 2026, but most importantly, it will strengthen our party for years to come. Young people are ready to jump in: Since the 2025 elections alone, the DNC has seen a 76% increase in applicants in our talent resume bank. Over the past year, we’ve launched new programs and resources to make sure we are harnessing that talent and enthusiasm and deploying it across the country.
The When We Count Fellowship — our largest-ever voter registration effort — will train hundreds of young Democrats to register tens of thousands of new Democratic voters and close critical voter registration gaps in priority congressional districts. The program is starting in Arizona and Nevada and expanding to more states this spring.
BlueMatch is a new resume matchmaking service that allows state parties and campaigns to request and receive strong candidates from the DNC’s talent bank as they start hiring for 2026.
The Battleground Leadership Project will recruit and train Coordinated Campaign Directors and Organizing Directors to start in early 2026.
The Dem Training Hub is a new website for campaign and state party leaders and staff to access hundreds of training materials and resources to help them build skills and serve as more effective operatives.
Winning the Narrative Online
Voters increasingly get their news on social media, and the DNC’s new War Room is helping ensure the DNC is driving the Democratic narrative online and competing with the right-wing propaganda machine.
@TheDemocrats‘ official TikTok page officially hit 4 million followers, increasing by 2.7 million users in the 2025 off-year alone.
The DNC has built a creator network with a combined 50m+ followers and hosted regular briefings on news of the week featuring surrogates, including Senator Ruben Gallego, Senator Tina Smith, and Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill.
I’m proud of what we accomplished together so far, and rest assured, the DNC is just getting started.
While most Americans struggle to afford their groceries and utility bills, Republicans have used their governing trifecta in Washington to pass tax cuts for billionaires and rip health care away from millions of people. Voters are fed up with Trump and Republicans’ agenda and are ready to hold them accountable in November.
Heading into the midterms, the DNC is doubling down on our efforts to send Republicans packing by registering new voters, training more volunteers, and building the infrastructure for state parties and coordinated campaigns in every state to help Democrats win.
The DNC is focused on electing Democrats up and down the ballot in November, but we also have an eye to the future. If the Democratic Party wants to compete everywhere and build long-term power across the country, we have to look beyond the election in front of us. We’ve made great investments so far this year, and we will continue in the years to come.
Ken Martin,
Chair
Democratic National Committee
Thank you, Ken, for all your hard work. That is exactly what we need - someone really digging in to make things happen. Appreciate all you do.
thank you we need to be united and strong