#Ken #Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor party, won the crowded race to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday.
Martin managed to win a majority of support from the committee’s voting members, who convened in National Harbor, Maryland, on Saturday to fill several key leadership roles.
Martin won outright on the first ballot, capturing 246.5 votes of the 428 ballots cast;
his closest competitor
– Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party
– won 134.5 votes on the first ballot.

“Thank you to the DNC members who have put their faith in my vision for our party,”
Martin said in his victory speech.
“We’re going to get to work. We’re going to fight;
we’re going to go out there and take this fight to Donald Trump and the Republicans,
and we’re going to fight for working people again in this party.”

A longtime state leader with extensive ties within the Democratic National Committee,
Martin inherits a party that appears disillusioned in the wake of Trump’s victory. -- The outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, chose not to seek re-election after the party lost not only the White House but both chambers of Congress in the November elections.
Martin emerged victorious from a crowded field of candidates that largely agreed on the major structural and reputational challenges facing the Democratic party as Trump begins his second term in the White House.
Most chair candidates emphasized the need to reconnect with the working-class Americans who have moved sharply to the right and to find more effective means of communicating their values to voters.
Martin’s supporters touted his victory as a promising first step to rebuilding the party and winning back young and working-class communities -- where Trump made strong inroads in November.

Martin’s first major test will come next year, as Democrats attempt to regain control of the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a narrow advantage.

“Ken Martin leading the DNC is a big step to building a party that can energize young voters and working-class voters so that we can defeat the far-right,”
said Stevie O’Hanlon, political director of the youth climate group Sunrise Movement.
“Under Ken Martin, the Minnesota DFL won a trifecta and immediately pursued a populist agenda that should have set a model for Democrats nationally.”

But Wikler’s supporters expressed severe disappointment over his loss, framing Martin’s victory as the perpetuation of a dangerous status quo that would further damage the Democratic party’s brand with voters.
“This is an insider’s game,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which endorsed Wikler.
“A perfectly fine longtime insider won, but we missed a transformational leader at a time when we need to show voters Democrats are doing things differently. Everyone wishes Ken the best.”
In his victory speech, Martin pledged to unify Democrats and incorporate the best ideas from his competitors in the chair race to ensure a stronger party moving forward.
“We’re going to bring them into this great party,” Martin said.

It remains unclear how effective the next chair will be in implementing his agenda.
In recent years, the committee has mostly served as an administrative body focused on fundraising, coordinating among state parties and setting rules for presidential primaries.

Faiz Shakir, the former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders who launched a last-minute and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the chair role, recently told the Guardian that the committee must seize this opportunity to move in a bolder direction.

“When Democrats have a Democratic president in charge, it is often the case that [the Democratic National Committee] is working at the behest of the president of the United States,” Shakir said.
“But now, when we don’t have the presidency, you take that structure and you say:
‘What is the most important thing that we have to do?’”
Martin will begin answering that question in the coming days,
and his response will help determine whether Democrats can once again capture the House majority in 2026 and eventually win back the White House in 2028.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/01/ken-martin-chair-democratic-national-committee?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Winklevoss twins, Rebekah Mercer, allies of Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and top Trump campaign aides recently joined a conclave of right-wing donors who are suddenly flush with power.

Just four days after being named the next White House chief of staff,
Susie Wiles was waiting patiently for an espresso drink at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas.

Overnight, she had become one of the most powerful people in America.

The value of a minute of her time could not be higher during the presidential transition:
Republican strivers are hounding her for desirable gigs,
and back at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump has kept courting controversy with his picks.

Yet here she was thousands of miles away, flanked only by a security guard,
alone in line at a Four Seasons coffee shop.

She had just peeled off from lunch with other top Trump campaign officials,
including her fellow campaign manager, Chris LaCivita;

the pollster Tony Fabrizio;

and the campaign’s fund-raising chief, Meredith O’Rourke.

“We’re all just chilling,” one member of the startled Trump entourage joked aloud when alerted that they had been spotted by a nearby New York Times reporter as they walked through the hotel.

What demanded the dayslong presence of all these Trumpworld figures during some of the most important weeks of their careers?

The fall gathering of a secretive group of wealthy tech executives and their allies who have ascended swiftly within the Republican Party’s donor class: the #Rockbridge #Network.

The group, which was co-founded five years ago by JD Vance,
sprouted from an informal set of dinners into a powerful coalition of Republican donors who have
given more than $100 million to Rockbridge projects since 2019, according to a person close to the group,
helping lead Silicon Valley’s march to the right.

For Rockbridge, Mr. Vance’s election as vice president was a crowning achievement
— and a tantalizing opportunity to wield new national influence.

But Rockbridge has largely kept its activities stealthy,
mindful of how groups of wealthy conservatives like the Koch Network have drawn attacks from both liberal detractors and Republican wannabes.

As caravans of black S.U.V.s shuttled in the billionaires from their private jets last week, members of the Rockbridge roster could be spotted around the hotel: #Rebekah #Mercer, the scion of one of the most prolific Republican donor families, greeted well-wishers in the lobby.

Working the happy-hour scene at the hotel bar were two close friends of #Elon #Musk’s
— #Ken #Howery and #Luke #Nosek, whose time with Mr. Musk at PayPal made them megawealthy themselves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/us/politics/rockbridge-trump-vance-wiles.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

A 'cash crunch' forces Senate Republicans to abandon traditional ads

High ad rates and a Democratic cash advantage have the GOP scrambling

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has canceled all of its planned independent expenditures across the country
and will instead use the money to finance "#hybrid" #ads with its candidates, reports Politico's Ally Mutnick.

The move, she explains is due to a "cash crunch" Republicans are facing thanks to superior fundraising by Democratic candidates.

Thanks to that deficit, the NRSC's shift has been underway for months.

Only the Senate races in Michigan and Nevada are still seeing traditional "#independent #expenditures"
from the committee, and these, too, will soon come to an end.

Hybrid commercials, allow outside spenders to split the cost of advertising with the campaign they're boosting
-- and take advantage of federal rules requiring stations to charge lower rates to candidates rather than the higher rates third-party groups face.

Party committees and super PACs can therefore get more bang for their buck,
especially in media markets where an influx of political ads has caused the cost of ad time to skyrocket.

Unnamed Republicans tell Mutnick that one such market is #Missoula, Montana, where outside groups now need to pay an astonishing 25 times as much as a candidate would.

Those same sources also relay that,
had the NRSC continued to air ads against Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen in Nevada,
it would need to pay a rate 10 times greater than the one its nominee, Sam Brown, is getting.

There's a drawback, though. Hybrid ads are subject to more stringent content requirements than other commercials.

Most notably, such ads are required to reference a political party writ large,
as opposed to just a single candidate.

These requirements, Mutnick notes, can make these spots "clunky and difficult to design."

That may not be much of a concern in red states like Montana or Ohio where a message broadly attacking Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party will likely be popular.

However, it can be more of an impediment in swing seats where the GOP candidates need to win over at least some voters open to backing Harris.

It's an especially serious obstacle in dark blue Maryland where Republican Larry Hogan is doing whatever he can to distance himself from Donald Trump and his allies.

However, the NRSC may not feel a need to invest in Maryland because a super PAC funded in part by
conservative #megadonor #Ken #Griffin is spending huge amounts on independent expenditures, and those ads are under no obligation to mention the rest of the GOP

https://www.the-downballot.com/p/morning-digest-a-crash-crunch-forces