Ken Martin's chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee has failed to inspire confidence. After a year and a half with Martin at the helm, the DNC is mired in debt and increasingly reliant on accounting gimmicks to stay afloat, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
That's a typical outcome for institutions run exclusively by Democrats, but Martin's incompetence is still impressive. On his watch, the Republican National Committee has amassed a $130 million cash advantage in a midterm year that should favor the opposition party. Martin picked one of his closest advisers to conduct an autopsy of the 2024 election, then declined to release it for months. Upon its eventual release due to public pressure, the autopsy was widely regarded as one of the sloppiest political documents ever produced.
Even for a Democrat who has worked his entire life in politics, Martin appears ill-suited to handle the stress of leading a large organization. Earlier this month, he reportedly "threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide" during a tantrum that ultimately involved the human resources department. He is described as increasingly isolated and paranoid about getting fired. Much has changed since the DNC leadership forum in 2025, which opened with a land acknowledgment and ended with every candidate agreeing that Kamala Harris lost because of "racism and misogyny."
None of this should come as a surprise given that Martin is from Minnesota. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he served 14 years as chair of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party before getting called up to the big leagues. He did an OK job of getting Democrats elected in a state that hasn't voted Republican in a presidential election since 1972. Martin's only noteworthy accomplishment is recruiting former Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) to run for Congress in 2018.
Phillips was the only Democrat with the balls to run against Joe Biden in 2024 on the grounds that the president should have a working brain. His entire party denounced him for being right. Alas, Phillips is a rare exception. Generally speaking, the Democrats coming out of Minnesota in recent years are the absolute worst.
Tim Walz
Remember him? The disgraced Minnesota governor got the VP nomination for being a non-Jewish white man who wouldn't make Kamala Harris look dumb by comparison. A former high school football coach who didn't know anything about football, Walz was far more comfortable prancing on stage than he was pretending to know how to load a shotgun. He lied repeatedly about serving in Afghanistan and living in China during the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
As governor, Walz presided over a historic surge in welfare fraud and recently pardoned a Laotian man convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old child, in part out of concern that the criminal would be deported.
Ilhan Omar
Best known for marrying her brother and sleeping with her political consultant, Omar was a raging antisemite before it was cool. Her hobbies include screaming profanities at reporters, being obnoxious at the State of the Union, and ranting about Jews on social media. Since marrying the political consultant in 2020, Omar's financial situation has become so shady that the Biden administration was compelled to investigate.
Keith Ellison
He presided over the same scandals as Walz while serving as Minnesota attorney general—he even met with some of the welfare fraudsters several weeks before the FBI moved in to make arrests. A former congressman with ties to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Ellison was at the forefront of the Democratic Party's embrace of virulent antisemitism.
Jake Sullivan
The former national security adviser developed a passion for curling while growing up in Minneapolis, where his father worked as a journalist and professor of journalism. Boasting degrees from Yale and Oxford, the alleged wunderkind advised Hillary Clinton during her first failed presidential campaign in 2008 and failed upward when she became secretary of state. Sullivan helped the Obama administration orchestrate a series of foreign policy disasters in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine before kick-starting the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Less than a year after joining the Biden administration, Sullivan presided over the calamitous military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Amy Klobuchar
She seems nice enough, but the senator's dark side came out during her failed White House run in 2020. Former Klobuchar staffers recalled being traumatized by her "explosive rage" and "dehumanizing" behavior. She occasionally pelted them with binders and once ate an airport salad with a comb and ordered a staffer to clean it after berating him for forgetting to bring her a fork. She's also bragged about murdering an innocent duck.
