DNC Chair Ken Martin meets with union members as he tours the country to rebuild support for his party.
DNC Chair Ken Martin meets with union members as he tours the country to rebuild support for his party. Credit: Courtesy Photo / DNC

It’s been anything but smooth sailing since Ken Martin was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee seven months ago.

His party wields little power in Washington, and voters complain that it appears more caught up in infighting than pushing back against President Donald Trump. Beyond that, Dems haven’t gained much traction in red states including Texas, where they haven’t won a statewide office in more than 30 years.

We caught up with Martin for a phone interview as he spent time last week in the San Antonio area to shore up local support, including a meeting with Democrats in flood-ravaged — and deep red — Kerr County. If the party’s going to bounce back, Martin said, it must meet voters on the ground, including in places where the GOP has long had the upper hand. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

I understand part of the reason you’re in the San Antonio area is to meet with Kerr County Democrats, a small minority indeed. What’s the purpose of that meeting?

It’s important for me to remind our party that there’s Democrats everywhere throughout this nation, including in rural red counties.

And our motto at the DNC is when you organize everywhere, you can win anywhere. And it’s just a simple reminder that when we give up on certain communities or certain counties, it just becomes a foregone conclusion that we’re going to continue to lose there.

So, this new DNC under my leadership has really expanded out its efforts to organize in communities far and wide so we can make sure that there’s no inch of ground that we’re not competing in, and that we’re doing our part to support those efforts.

And so, that’s why I am heading out to rural counties here in Texas and rural counties throughout the country. We need to expand our coalition, expand our opportunities. And the way to do that is to get off the beaten path, so to speak, and make sure we’re competing everywhere.

Texas has been a bridge too far for Democrats for a long time — three decades if we’re counting wins in statewide offices. Does the DNC even have a chance to change the dynamics in a state that’s so stubbornly red?

Yeah, it’s a great question, and I would say first you have to have a long-term plan on how you build, right? And as you mentioned, we haven’t won here statewide in some time. We are winning at local levels, though, and you can see that, and there has been some positive progress over the last decade or so.

But, for us, the reality is, we actually have to have a long-term plan, as I mentioned. The Brennan Center came out with a report in December that showed that the five fastest-growing states in the country right now are Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, followed by Florida.

So six of the 10 fastest-growing states are all in the U.S. South, meaning that after the next census in 2030, as we go into reapportionment, Texas will likely gain an additional five congressional seats on top of what they already have.

I have to use a hockey analogy here since I’m from Minnesota. Wayne Gretzky once said, “You have to skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is.” And we’re going to lose congressional power and electoral votes in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, California. It’s all going to shift down to the U.S. South.

And so we can’t be caught flat-footed when that map actually shifts in 2032. We have to be prepared to win the future, but we also have to be prepared to win the moment. And what does that mean? Right now, it means that we shift our focus. I think the national party has focused way too much on control of Congress and the presidency at the expense of local offices, state legislative seats, county offices, municipal offices, school boards, mayorships, etc.

That’s how you actually build a party. That’s how you rebuild in states like Texas. Not just exclusively focusing on the top-of-the-ticket races, but realizing that when you organize at a local level, it actually helps you win over time.

And we have left too many seats uncontested here in Texas. We have left too many counties unorganized where they don’t have any elected Democratic Party leadership. We have just not done the basic building of the infrastructure in a way that will help us win in the long term. And so that’s really why we’re focusing on building at the grassroots level in counties far and wide throughout this state.

Given the size of Texas and how spread out it is, setting that in motion is a pricey proposition.

It is.

So, does it even make sense pump that kind of money into a state that’s not shown much interest in what the Democratic Party has to offer?

Well, here’s what I would say. Texas is not a red state. As crazy as that sounds. Texas is a state that doesn’t vote. There are more Democrats in the state than Republicans, but they don’t vote. And the state on the whole doesn’t vote. It’s a very low civically engaged voting state, meaning people just aren’t very active in their politics.

And, again, for us, that means there’s an opportunity here. If you build the infrastructure — the right way to organize — to register people to vote, to persuade them to support your candidate and your party and then to mobilize them, you can win.

The danger when people look at Texas is that they just look at what’s been happening on the statewide level. They’re not looking what’s happening on the local level. They’re not looking underneath the hood like we have to do with the electoral trends. They’re not looking at the possibilities with demographic shifts and population shifts that give us opportunities in parts of the state to rebuild. 

So, I’m actually bullish on our chances.

Now, it’s not going to happen overnight. While we’ve got excellent candidates running for Senate in ’26 here and some excellent opportunities on the congressional level in Texas, the reality is that what I’m focused in on, in addition to that, is making sure we’re building this the right way so we can start winning at the local level and put ourselves in a position to be the majority party here in Texas.

Trump World has presented a target-rich environment for the Democrats. However, at the same time, there’s been no shortage of infighting at the DNC since the ’24 election. Can you get that infighting behind the party and actually work to build the kind of apparatus you’re taking about?

Well, look, none of that came from me. I would just say that we have been relentlessly focused. In the last six months I’ve been on the job, I’ve been in 31 states. I’ve traveled throughout this country, meeting with folks, getting the message out, raising the money, meeting with local party leaders and elected officials, making sure that people are focused on one thing, which is winning.

There’s a lot of people in D.C. who want to win the argument, who are more interested in that internal conversation. I’m not one of them. I could care less. What I’m focused in on is one thing, and that’s winning. 

So look, I can’t speak to what others want to focus on. While others want to focus on the inside baseball drama of the Democratic Party, which leads to all these Dems in disarray stories, that’s of no concern to me. What I’m focused in on is building the party the right way, and also reforming it and democratizing it. …

Political observers sounded alarm bells over the number of South Texas voters, especially Latinos, swinging from the Democratic Party to Trump. What’s the DNC doing to reverse that?

Well, you’ve already seen a reversal, right? 

You saw a significant swing in ’24 with Latinos — more pronounced, of course, with Latino men. But in the last six to seven months now since Trump was inaugurated, that margin has all but evaporated. It certainly has with Latino women, who are overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party now, and it’s swung back quite significantly with Latino men.

The danger, of course, for Trump is the coalition they built is really built on sand. And these shifting tides show that the coalition that delivered for him in ’24 no longer really supports him. Young people, Latino voters, women, even the huge leads he had with men overall, have shrunk as well.

But … we’re not taking anything for granted. While Trump has lost support, it’s incumbent upon the Democratic Party to go out and gain that support. It doesn’t necessarily accrue to our benefit unless we’re willing to go out and have conversations with those voters and give them a sense of what we would do to improve their lives and what would be different with Democrats in control.

And that’s why, again, I’m traveling to rural counties. I’m traveling throughout this country to make sure we’re getting the word out to as many people as possible, to meet with folks, to bring a lot of those folks back into the conversation, and give them a sense of what we’re going to do to improve their lives.

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This article appears in Sep 3-17, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...