Rufus Gifford, ex-deputy campaign manager to former President Joe Biden, explained on Monday why there is “no saving” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Gifford, who served as DNC finance director during former President Barack Obama‘s administration, warned in a Substack article that the committee is “spiraling toward irrelevance” based on its inability to raise money and push its message, largely based on Martin’s unwillingness to communicate compared to his predecessors.
“The number of times Jim Messina or Jen O’Malley Dillon called me to help try and figure out how to fund special projects like these are in the dozens,” Gifford explained in the article. “And we were successful because of the relationships we had collectively built and the trust we had accumulated over the years.”
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He added, “It seems clear that such requests or the multitude of others – and there will be literally hundreds of asks for money in the fall – could not be met with a ‘yes’ at this point. That is a failure and we have been seeing this coming for a year now.”
Though Gifford clarified that he believed Martin to be “a good man,” he wrote that he never heard from the DNC head during his time with Biden in 2024, further proving that he was unable to rise to the occasion.
“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. The leaks coming from inside the building streaming across every media outlet say to me that the (diligent and wonderful) staff are losing or have lost faith,” Gifford wrote.
He continued, “As Democrats, the only solution is to acknowledge the problem and fix it. Now. We need to lean on each other, call each other for help, acknowledge the anger and the disappointment people feel while respecting and bringing together the voices both new and old.”
In a comment to Fox News Digital, a DNC official pointed to Martin’s Substack article from last week arguing that the DNC has raised the most money of any DNC without the White House in the party’s history.
“If the question is whether the Democratic Party will be ready to win — everywhere, at every level, in this election and for the decade ahead — the answer is a resounding yes,” Martin wrote.
Gifford’s article followed ongoing reports about financial concerns and internal tensions within the DNC. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Martin faced a formal human resources complaint after allegedly throwing his phone at a junior aide’s desk earlier this month.
Federal Election Commission records also showed the committee ended June with $16.3 million in cash and $18.5 million in debt. By comparison, the Republican National Committee reported $128.5 million in cash and no debt.
