Democrats elect Minnesota’s Ken Martin as their new leader

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By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Looking to rebuild after the party’s election loss to Donald Trump in November, the Democratic National Committee on Saturday elected Ken Martin, the leader of the state party in Minnesota, as its new chair.

Martin will be tasked with reversing the fortunes of a bruised and demoralized Democratic Party that not only lost control of the White House last November but failed to win either chamber of Congress.

Since then, the rudderless party has struggled to respond to Republican Trump’s barrage of executive orders, many of which reversed former Democratic President Joe Biden’s policies.

A longtime Democratic strategist in Minnesota, Martin jumped into action hours after his election, blasting Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China as a sure way to jack up prices for inflation-weary Americans after promising to lower their costs throughout the 2024 campaign.

“Trump isn’t going to make corporate billionaires pay for these tariffs – working families and small businesses will,” he said in a statement after Trump’s tariff announcement. “He’s using American workers as pawns in his petty political games.”

Martin has called for restoring and augmenting the party’s national infrastructure in order to contest races across the country. He beat out Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Wikler on the first ballot.

“Today’s elections mark a new chapter in DNC leadership, and Donald Trump and his billionaire allies are put on notice: we will hold them accountable for ripping off working families, and we will beat them at the ballot box,” Martin said in a statement.

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Alistair Bell and Christopher Cushing)