Democrats lose patience with embattled DNC chair

Democrats say they have lost patience with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin amid his precarious tenure at the national party.

Some members of the party see the problems facing Martin as creating an unwelcome distraction for Democrats as they look to flip control of Congress this fall. And a rash of headlines and social media chatter about Martin over the weekend have only exacerbated the problems facing the DNC chair. 

The New York Times reported that the party chair has been increasingly anxious about losing his job as party head and threw a phone at an aide’s desk earlier this month in frustration, prompting a human resources complaint. Sources told the Times that Martin met with HR after the incident. The DNC declined to comment to The Hill about the incident.

The party also received renewed attention around its finances this week. While it had been previously reported that the DNC had taken out a $15 million line of credit last fall, Washington, D.C. property deeds, first reported by NOTUS, confirmed that the national party had specifically put up its building as collateral for the loan — a measure the DNC has previously undertaken with other loans over the years.

Though House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) iterated his support for Martin over the weekend, the news is diverting attention away from Democrats’ goal of taking back the House and potentially the Senate in November as they look to 2028.

“At this point, I think there is no saving Martin’s chairmanship. He is a good man with good intentions but simply not meeting this critical moment,” Rufus Gifford, who served as the finance chair of former Vice President Harris’s 2024 campaign, wrote in a Substack post on Monday.

Democrats began to scoff at Martin’s tenure months ago when they realized the party fundraising wasn’t where it needed to be. But the annoyance level with Martin reached a fever pitch this spring when he decided to release an autopsy of why Democrats lost the 2024 election after previously declining to do so.

Democrats — even those who wanted the report released — fumed that the autopsy was riddled with errors and........

© The Hill