In the run-up to the Democratic National Committee chair election, Ben Wikler, the Democratic Party chair in Wisconsin, has garnered support from across the party’s ideological spectrum and from all levels of the party. While his supporters say he’s the best man for the job, they caution that it’ll be an uphill battle to get new blood the top spot.
Wikler has been the party chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, but before that, he was a media personality, activist and a Democratic Party staffer. Wikler worked on former Sen. Al Franken’s, D-Minn., radio show before working on Sen. Sherrod Brown’s, D-Ohio, 2006 Senate campaign. He served as an executive at Change.org and as the Washington Director of MoveOn.org. And, ahead of the 2016 primaries, Wikler helped head up MoveOn.org’s efforts to recruit Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to run for president while also helping advocate for Syrian refugees in 2015.
His career in activism and Democratic organizing, however, isn’t what most of his backers point to when they discuss why they’re backing Wikler. Rep. Mark Pocan, the Democrat from Wisconsin’s Second District, told Salon that he’s backing Wikler because he sees him as a DNC outsider who can exceed at the three things a party chair needs to do: communicate, fundraise and organize.
“I’d met him when he was the political director at Move On. Then he had talked to me and others about wanting to move back to Wisconsin and be active and I think I was one of the first people to back him because I knew his skillset from watching him in Washington,” Pocan said. “I knew he was an organizer by training and he had that box checked but he also became a great fundraiser and a great communicator.”
Pocan said that in Wikler’s time as party chair in Wisconsin, he and other Democrats had been more involved in party decisions both in and outside the context of political campaigns. He also said that Wikler had overseen a dramatic expansion in the role that the Democratic Party was playing in communities across the state, both in Democratic strongholds like Milwaukee and in more rural areas, where the party apparatus had atrophied.
“What it means is that he’s put an actual investment into grassroots — a financial investment as well as a physical investment like staff. People have interactions with voters even when they’re not asking for a vote,” Pocan said. “Honestly it's the totality. I’ve never seen the amount of offices and the organizational level to get out the vote. In Madison, turnout is at 93 percent plus, which sounds like a mad up number it’s so high, but it's what you get when you have that sort of organization.”
Matt Bennett, a centrist Third Way Democrat who served in the Clinton White House, said he and his organization also support Wikler, an unashamed progressive. Bennet explained to Salon that “Ben is interested in winning the election and is not interested in involving the party or himself in internecine battles within the party.”
Bennett said that he took note of Wikler’s decision to stand by the Democratic nominee in Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District in 2024, Rebecca Cooke, who ran as a centrist in the Republican district. Bennet said Cooke faced some criticism from progressives during her campaign but that Wikler “had her back” despite his own ideological leanings.
“In other districts, he was supporting the person running farther to the left which is how a party chair is supposed to act,” Bennet said. “He can play a role as an honest broker.”
Bennet added that Wikler’s background in Wisconsin politics is also valuable because he’s proven he can be successful in a state in the heartland of the United States which is also a fierce political background.
“We need someone from the middle of the country, which is where the battle is being fought. But geography isn't enough. Ken Martin seems like a nice guy but Democrats haven't lost a presidential election since 1972 in Minnesota,” Bennet said. “The final and most important thing is that Ben generates excitement in a way that you don't often see”
For Pocan, Bennet and others backing Wikler, the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election was a touchstone moment. Wikler and the party he chaired were able to get both Wisconsinites and people around the country to tune into an off-year and nominally nonpartisan election. That year, a liberal judge, Janet Protasiewicz, won a seat on the state Supreme Court, flipping the court from a conservative to a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years.
Wikler supporters point to this dogged willingness to fight in between high-profile elections and an ability to draw attention to issues and battles as lacking in the national Democratic Party, especially in the wake of a crushing 2024 defeat.
Pocan cautions that, despite some support from high-up figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Wikler is still probably the underdog in the Feb. 1 election for DNC chair.
“I don’t think that he’s the frontrunner. I think it’s the chair of the chairs who is likely the frontrunner because he’s been paling around with those folks for a long time,” Pocan said. “There are 448 people who make this decision and he’s not someone who has spent his life courting 448 people. It’s not something we normally get. If the same insiders are ultimately the people running the organization we get the same ideas.”
While it’s hard to find a Democrat who thinks Wikler has done a bad job as party chair in Wisconsin, he’s not the only candidate for party chair. Other state party chairs like Jane Kleed of Nebraska and Ken Martin of Minnesota are also running for the position as well as ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. Of these candidates, Martin appears to have the most endorsements of DNC members, entering the race with 100 endorsements from the 448 DNC members who elect the next party leader.
