Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler could soon lead national Democratic Party

Democrats on Saturday will gather just outside Washington to take an early step in their journey out of the political wilderness: electing their party’s next national chair.

Among the candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee is Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler, who has served as chair of the state Democratic Party since 2019. His fiercest competition to lead the national Democratic Party comes from Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. The three have sparred in recent days over who is leading the race to secure a majority of votes from the DNC’s 448 voting members.

Wikler’s camp declined Monday morning to share an updated whip count with Wisconsin Watch. As of Friday afternoon, he said 151 voting DNC members were backing his bid. The Martin and O’Malley camps did not respond to questions about updated whip counts, but Martin said last week he had the backing of 200 members. Both Wikler and O’Malley questioned that number, with a Wikler spokesperson calling it “inflated.”

The first candidate to secure 225 votes on Saturday will serve as Democrats’ next national chair. If no candidate reaches that threshold during the first round of voting, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and members will cast another ballot, repeating the process until a chair is selected.

Wikler’s time as head of the state party has been, by most standards, a success. Capitalizing on the anti-Trump momentum of the 2018 midterms, Democrats have won eight of 11 statewide races since Wikler took over — including the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 gubernatorial election. The state Democratic Party was also instrumental in winning a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has remade Wisconsin’s political landscape. 

But there have been setbacks: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson got reelected in an otherwise positive year for Democrats in 2022, and Donald Trump carried the state last year, helping return him to the White House.

Wikler maintains he’s the right person to lead the party, and he says Democrats need to make their party more transparent, change the way they communicate with voters and return to being focused on addressing the needs of working people.

“(Democrats) don’t talk the talk in a way that shows people that they’re fighting the fight,” Wikler said last week during an introspective moment at a candidate forum hosted by the Texas Democratic Party. “And that’s where we need to change.”

A shift in the landscape

Republicans and Democrats alike in Wisconsin said that if Wikler is tapped to lead the national party it will change the political landscape in Wisconsin.

“I know politics. And I love politics. And he is a very good politician,” Republican former Gov. Tommy Thompson said of Wikler. “The Democrat Party could do a hell of a lot worse going with somebody else than Ben Wikler.”

In fact, Thompson, who congratulated Wikler on his success as state party chair, seems keen on having the Democratic leader move on from his current post.

“I want to contribute to him!” he joked about Wikler while speaking with reporters.

Brian Schimming, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, also acknowledged that Wikler “is a talented guy.” But he was quick to point out that Wisconsin Democrats came up short on key goals in November. Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t carry the state, U.S. Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil are still in Congress, and Republicans still control the Legislature, Schimming noted. Their only success, the GOP chair claimed, was getting Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin reelected.

“Whether it’s Ben or anybody else, that party has a lot of issues,” Schimming said of Democrats. “So they are going to need a lot of people to step up, not just their chair, to fix what’s wrong with that party right now.”

While Democratic leaders acknowledge that Wikler moving on to the national party would be a loss for their efforts in Wisconsin, they said it’s time for the national party to choose a leader from a state that has a history of deciding elections.

Wikler helped Wisconsin Democrats crawl out of the political hole they found themselves in in the 2010s, said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, which gives him experience the national party could lean on.

“He’s been very invested in the Legislature, (we’ve) spoken often about our strategy and how to win, and he was involved even in calling candidates and helping recruit people,” Neubauer said. “So it’s, of course, going to be a loss for us, but we’re certainly very supportive of his run for DNC chair.”

Wisconsin Democrats have built out infrastructure that will last beyond Wikler’s time as chair, Neubauer added, pointing to year-round organizing efforts that will persist regardless of who is state party chair.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.