More than 16,000 volunteers are already in the field, creating what DNC chair Ken Martin describes as an unprecedented organizing infrastructure for a non-presidential year.
Ken Martin, then the chair of the Minnesota DFL party and now the chair of the DNC, introduces Amy Klobuchar to an election watch party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on November 5, 2024.
(Christopher Mark Juhn / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Twenty twenty-five has already been a good year for Democrats at the ballot box. No doubt the chaos, cruelty, and incompetence of the Trump administration have helped renew Democratic fortunes after the party lost the White House and the Senate in 2024. But you can’t simply rely on the other side’s failures to win elections. You need to seize the moment yourself. And there is mounting evidence that Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, who has never made his enthusiasm for grassroots organizing a secret, is doing just that.
The DNC’s recently elected chair is big on the notion that “there are no off years,” as he told me this week. With that in mind, Martin and DNC deputy executive director Libby Schneider have responded to this intense moment in US political life with a little noted but highly effective strategy that has already got 16,000 volunteers in the field nationwide—and that promises to increase the numbers dramatically in an off-year election cycle that will set up the definitional midterm voting of 2026.
It’s all part of what Schneider describes as “a new organizing program targeted to drive grassroots Democrats to take action and demand accountability from Republicans who are advancing a disastrous budget bill that steals from working families to give handouts to the ultra-rich.”
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The leadership team at the DNC is leaning with increasing urgency and eagerness toward “the 50-state strategy” that has been much discussed in party circles in the almost two decades since former DNC chair Howard Dean’s attempt to implement the approach was abandoned. The current effort is powered by what party strategists such as Schneider refer to as “the strongest organizing infrastructure the national party has ever had at this point in a non-presidential election year.”
This is the work that Martin, who was the longtime chair of the very successful Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party before his February election as DNC chair, says he is obsessed with above all else. And that obsession seems to be paying off, in the form of not just election wins but also high turnout for 100 DNC-sponsored town halls across the country that challenged Republican assaults on everything from Medicaid to democracy itself.
Martin says the party is just getting started.
“”You’re going to continue to witness a level of aggressive investment and organizing from this DNC that’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” Martin told me, as he and members of his team touted a new national digital organizing community that seeks to “centralize communication of training opportunities, events, and accountability campaigns” as well as a training program that’s focused on equipping grassroots supporters mobilizing around its “Fight to Save Medicaid” campaign. “With our guiding principles for organizing, our party will be dedicated year-round to organizing communities, empowering the grassroots, electing candidates who fight for working people, and improving the lives of Americans. Moving forward, there are no off years,” Martin said.
The “no off years” line is a good one. But new party leaders always talk about fresh approaches and fresh strategies. And, in the case of the Democrats, they often argue about them. There’s been plenty of drama associated with the DNC in recent weeks, especially since its credentials subcommittee recommended a rerun of vice-chair elections amid complaints about how the initial balloting was conducted—and as arguments have flared about how to deal with primary fights. There are legitimate and important debates to be had within a party where there is broad agreement on the need to change, but less of a consensus on the specific shifts that will be required.
Even as those debates unfold, however, Democrats have bigger fish to fry—namely, the election campaigns that need to be run this year. Like any odd-year schedule, 2025’s election cycle is a bit of a grab bag: races for governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, legislative seats in those states and others nationwide, as well as consequential judicial and mayoral contests. The midterms are more than a year off, but that doesn’t mean that the electoral stakes aren’t sky-high. That’s why, since taking charge of the party a little over three months ago, Martin and his team have adopted a no-excuses approach to 2025.
“Our early-organizing investments are already paying off,” Schneider said.
She’s right. Even as Democrats have been debating about how to reposition after a messy 2024 election cycle, they have begun to establish a winning record in 2025.
The party-backed candidate for an open Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin won a landslide victory in April, despite an endorsement of the GOP-favored candidate from Trump and massive spending by Elon Musk and other Republican-aligned billionaires. In the first four months of the year, Democrats won five contests that secured the party’s control of state legislative chambers, flipped seats in Iowa and Pennsylvania districts that Trump won by double digits, and dramatically outperformed their 2024 numbers in special-election contests across the country. Then, last week in Omaha, Republicans were shocked when one of the few party members to serve as a big-city mayor was ousted by a Democratic challenger who secured a 57–43 margin.
There’s no doubt that much of this has to do with the way in which Trump and Musk, the billionaire who has served as the president’s program-slashing “special government employee,” and their Republican allies in Congress, have operated since taking control of the federal government in January. Moves that have undermined Social Security and the Veterans Administration and the threatened cuts to Medicaid are stirring real fears. And real activism. “There are no off days and no off years,” Schneider said, echoing Martin. “The DNC is the first national Democratic committee doing direct voter-contact organizing for the 2025 and 2026 elections and we are witnessing in real time what a sustained, year-round organizing model can mean for elections up and down the ballot. Democrats are consistently overperforming in elections across the country, to the tune of 22 overperformances in 24 elections in the first five months of 2025 alone.”
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