The DNC’s Money Problems Blamed on Ken Martin

The problems at the DNC are nothing new at this point. Two months ago, the NY Times revealed that the organization was going broke thanks in part to big donors deciding to sit out.

Six people briefed on the party’s fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its finances frankly, said big donors — who are an essential part of the party’s funding — had been very slow to give to the party this year as Mr. Martin solicits contributions. His commitment to state parties, which amounts to $1 million in monthly spending, has further strained the finances.

Senior D.N.C. officials have discussed the possibility of borrowing money in the coming months to keep the operations fully funded, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private discussions who insisted on anonymity…

…the party’s total cash reserves shrank by $4 million from January through April, according to the most recent federal records, while the Republican National Committee’s coffers swelled by roughly $29 million. A new report is due this week.

Today, Politico has a follow up which says nothing has changed and in fact the DNC is still struggling thanks to debt carried over from the Harris campaign.

After a brutal 2024 election and several months into rebuilding efforts under new party leadership, the DNC wildly trails the Republican National Committee by nearly every fundraising metric. By the end of June, the RNC had $80 million on hand, compared to $15 million for the DNC…

Major Democratic donors have withheld money this year amid skepticism about the party’s direction, while the small-dollar donors who have long been a source of strength are not growing nearly enough to make up the gap. And the party has quickly churned through what money it has raised in the first half of the year, including spending more than $15 million this year to pay off lingering expenses from Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

At first glance it might appear that the problems the DNC is facing have to do with the party as a whole. They took a beating in the last election and haven’t really been able to get much resistance traction in the first six months of the Trump administration. But Politico looked at the numbers and found that other Democratic groups are doing fairly well. It’s really just the DNC that is struggling.

The DNC’s money woes stand out among major Democratic groups, POLITICO’s analysis found: Democrats’ House and Senate campaign arms are near financial parity with their Republican counterparts, and several major donors who have withheld funds from the DNC are still giving to those groups.

“Donors see the DNC as rudderless, off message and leaderless. Those are the buzzwords I keep hearing over and over again,” said one Democratic donor adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly about donors’ approach.

In short, the problem appears to be DNC Chair Ken Martin in particular. And Martin doesn’t seem willing to take the heat to bring those big donors back on board.

“If Ken [Martin] really wanted to impress donors, he’d go do 20 or 30 salon events with donors and let them yell at him,” said the Democratic donor adviser. “If you take that on the chin, make some changes, then I think we could see some movement. But [he’s] not going to do that.”

It’s not hard to see this from the big donors point of view. They are being asked to go all in when the DNC is still spending a million or more per month to pay off debts on the losing Harris campaign. The campaign burned through $1.5 billion in less than four months last year.

Vice President Kamala Harris spent a remarkable $1.5 billion in her hyper-compressed 15-week presidential campaign. But in the days since losing to President-elect Donald J. Trump, her operation has faced questions internally and externally over where exactly all that cash went.

Despite her significant financial advantage, Ms. Harris became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades, ceding every battleground state to Mr. Trump.

Her cash-rich campaign spared no expense as it hunted for voters — paying for an avalanche of advertising, social-media influencers, a for-hire door-knocking operation, thousands of staff, pricey rallies, a splashy Oprah town hall, celebrity concerts and even drone shows.

To blow through all of that cash from big donors and then still have another $20 million in debt at the end of it which you’re stuck trying to pay off has to be a very bitter pill to swallow. Maybe if there were some deep love or respect for Kamala Harris donors would step forward but there’s not. Big donors rightly see her campaign as a disaster and a waste. Who can blame them for not wanting to throw more money down a hole. So maybe Ken Martin is part of the problem here but I suspect Kamala Harris is also part of it.