WASHINGTON, D.C. (NewsNation) — In the wake of November’s election that saw Republicans win the trifecta — the White House and majorities in the House and Senate — Democrats have been soul-searching.
Part of that includes a search for new party leadership. Whoever wins the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee will be responsible for the party’s new direction, pushing back against the incoming Trump administration and creating Democratic wins in future elections.
NewsNation has interviewed all four of the candidates up for the job. Below is a Q&A conducted with Martin O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland, who is vying for the position. Read Q&As with the other candidates here.
The interview has been edited and paraphrased for clarity and length.
NewsNation: What went into your decision to run for DNC chair?
O’Malley: When Donald Trump won for the second time, I kind of tossed and turned for a couple days because I now understand, as I think many people do, that the republic is in real dire straits right now, and the only thing that stands between saving the republic and losing the republic is our ability to quickly rebuild and reconnect and get the Democratic Party battle-ready for the elections that are coming.
I’m not running to fix blame, although, of course, we have to look at what we did wrong. We have to learn from the few places where we did things right. But I am running to turn around our party in order to save our country. That was my thought process, and I am in this to win this. And doors are opening all over the country, and I’m excited about the future.
NewsNation: What is your message as a candidate for DNC chair?
O’Malley: What the DNC needs is not a caretaker. We need a change maker. I am probably the best operational turnaround leader in our party today that is willing to do this, and I proved it most recently in the biggest domestic program in America [Social Security Administration], when the President asked me to pull it out of a customer service meltdown.
Second, I am the only candidate that’s actually chaired a national committee, the Democratic Governors Association, where we expanded our map, and we raised record amounts in my three years.
And third, and finally, I’ve actually run for office. I’ve knocked on doors as a city council candidate. I have been elected in a majority African-American city, and then again, by higher and higher margins, and reelected after a recession as governor of the very diverse state of Maryland.
And we did it by always bringing the message back to the kitchen table, the economic realities of every family that we as a party should be serving and should be leading.
I’m running because I love my country, and I know we are the only thing, we the Democratic Party, that stands between saving the republic and losing the republic. And I want the DNC members to make their decision based on what they think is best for their country. And I will throw myself into this with 1,000% of what I have.
NewsNation: What are your top three priorities if elected DNC chair?
O’Malley: We have to quickly rebuild, reconnect, and reengage our party. There are all sorts of leading actions underneath each of those large headings.
I am the only candidate in this race that actually has a proven record at every level, in a city, in a state, and now in the largest domestic program in America, Social Security, of being an operational turnaround leader. All of us running are committed to a 57-state strategy. All of us who are running, I believe, want to field candidates to run for elections all across the ballot, from school board all the way to Congress and state houses.
But only one of us actually has a proven record as an operational turnaround leader. Two areas in particular, though, where we need to get back in the game is voter protection. That is the protection of voting rights everywhere, and also voter registration. And doing that directly as a party, and not offloading it to some well-intended nonprofit that registers mostly independents.
NewsNation: All of the candidates are talking about a 50-state strategy or 57-territory-and-state strategy. What does your version of that strategy look like?
O’Malley: We need to make sure that we have steady party operations, which means we have to be able to pay our chairs and pay our executive directors at bare minimum. I will also need to travel to all of the states on a regular basis to help the party build and to restore our credibility with the people who have donated to the party this year, between the party and the campaign, in record numbers, all of whom are very upset that their dollars were not better spent.
I am the only candidate in this race who’s actually chaired a national committee. For three years in a row, I chaired the Democratic Governors Association. We focused our brand to, “Jobs. Opportunity. Now.”
We won states like Montana, Kentucky, which we still hold, North Carolina, Missouri for a time, and that was three years of record fundraising.
So right now, all of the candidates are saying, we’re going to reinvest in our parties. We’re going to invest more in our state parties. But right now, none of us can say there’s anything in the DNC bank to back up that commitment.
We need somebody that has a proven ability to raise money and to organize, and who has done it on a national level. Because right now, you know, you can’t really give parties monopoly money and expect them to have good operations.
NewsNation: Are there any specific tactics that you’ll use in your role as chair to help Democrats win?
O’Malley: The message has to always come back to the economic kitchen table reality of every American. So when it comes to the messaging, as a party, we have to up our game, both in terms of the technology we can offer our candidates and the techniques we can offer our candidates.
We had a great ground time to game, by all reports from the hundreds of people I’ve spoken to who were on the front lines of this campaign, if we define ground game as knocking on doors. But it’s not just about knocking on doors. We were knocking on doors, but the other guys through online media, through meeting people where they were in terms of communities online, they were already inside the doors for three or four months, using data to segment and to feed their messaging into those households.
In some of our House races, we did that as well. Places where our candidates did better than the national ticket, the common denominator was they were using better technologies and better techniques to communicate with people online about the economic issues they cared most about. So that’s what we need to do.
NewsNation: How do you plan on reaching out to/appealing to men of color, particularly Latino men who shifted quite dramatically, as well as Black men who shifted a little bit?
O’Malley: It was a terrible loss for the party that has traditionally been the party that has the backs of working people of every color and ethnic background. Whether we’re talking about Latino men, whether we’re talking about Black men, whether we’re talking about white or Black women, the one thing that unites all of us is our desire to be able to make it in this world and to do better by our kids through our own hard work than our parents did by us.
As a party, now that we are a party in total opposition, we need to make sure that when Donald Trump does things that harm the economic well-being of families all across America, we connect those dots. And we let people know that we’re a party that has their back.
We did not communicate very well over the last few years in connecting those dots in a positive way so that people could honestly believe tomorrow is going to be better. But now we have to point out why the things that Donald Trump is doing are going to break things that families and their financial well-being depend upon. Like Social Security, prescription drug prices, tariffs that are going to drive up food bills and destroy farm economies and in ways that we haven’t seen for decades and decades and decades.
So that’s what we need to do. Everybody wants to run to identity politics. I don’t think there’s any particular nuance. We all have to eat, we all have to put a roof over our kid’s head. We all want to do better by our families and give them a more secure economic future.