Six Months In, Democrats Are Building for the Long-Term

August 1, 2025

MEMORANDUM

TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Ken Martin, DNC Chair 
DATE: August 1, 2025
RE: Six Months In, Democrats Are Building for the Long-Term

A little over six months ago, when I campaigned to lead the Democratic National Committee, I ran on a vision of transforming the DNC into an organization that not only operates in permanent campaign mode, but in generational campaign mode. What does that mean? 

It means a DNC that looks ten years into the future, winning back and bringing in new voters, rebuilding and earning trust, and anticipating technological and information environment advances to ensure our state parties and candidates have the latest tools to help them win. 

And it means a DNC that truly listens to the tens of millions of people in this country who make the Democratic Party the most effective political arm of the working class in American history.

As an organization, our job is to win elections, including this year in places like Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and in next year’s midterms. But we must also invest now in the critical elements of organizing and map expansion that are necessary to win elections in three years, seven years, and 11 years. 

After six months on the job, here’s what we’ve done and the path forward. 

Building to Win

The best barometer of how voters feel is how they vote. Resoundingly, elections so far in 2025 show voters are fed up with Donald Trump and already looking for change. The DNC is answering voters’ demands:

  • Democratic momentum continues to build: Out of 35 major elections this year, Democrats have won or overperformed in 34.
  • In 2025, Democrats secured victory or overperformed in 25 state legislative elections, of which 11 were in red states.
    • Democrat James Malone claimed an upset victory in an R+23 state Senate district in Lancaster County, crediting voters’ anger at Trump’s chaos as a major factor in his win — that district hasn’t had a Democrat representing it since 1979, and a Democratic president hadn’t won Lancaster County since Lyndon B. Johnson won it in 1964.
    • Democrats also sealed a Democratic majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to protect abortion access and dismantle corporate greed. 
    • To defend North Carolina voters, the DNC provided legal, communications, and organizational support to the North Carolina Democratic Party and State Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs as Riggs’ disgraced Republican opponent refused to concede for nearly six months.
  • In March, the DNC launched voter contact campaigns in Wisconsin and Florida. In Wisconsin, our efforts resulted in some 72,000 calls to voters in support of Judge Susan Crawford and down-ballot candidates. In Florida, we attempted over 50,000 voter contacts in special election congressional districts. 
  • The DNC’s GOTV efforts also supported the election of Omaha, Nebraska’s first Democratic mayor since 2009, ousting the longest-serving Republican Mayor in the country. Mayor John Ewing Jr. won by over 12 points.
  • In early June, the DNC supported the Texas Democratic Party and Gina Ortiz Jones’ historic win in San Antonio’s mayoral race, making 40,000 voter contact attempts and recruiting volunteers in the San Antonio area to canvas during the final days of the race. 
  • In July, the DNC launched our ongoing campaign against Trump and Republicans’ gerrymandering scheme in Texas, sending over 250,000 texts to voters in Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth to empower them to speak out against voter disenfranchisement at field hearings happening in each city.
    • The DNC has marshaled 30,000 volunteers to reach persuadable Republican voters in key Texas House districts to let them know that House Republicans are playing games with their votes instead of focusing on relief for flood victims.

Organizing Everywhere

Historic Investments

But the DNC isn’t just showing up for the elections and fights around the corner. Under my leadership, the DNC is making historic investments in all our states and territories for the long term. In April, the DNC and ASDC launched the “organize everywhere, win anywhere” strategy — a new four-year agreement to deliver more resources into Democratic state and territory parties than ever before.

  • Under the new State Partnership Program (SPP) agreement, each state party will receive a baseline of $17,500 a month, a $5,000 per month increase over the last agreement, and Republican-controlled states will receive an additional investment of $5,000 a month through the DNC’s Red State Fund, putting their total at $22,500 every month.
  • The combined investments total a monthly transfer of more than $1 million from the DNC to state parties every single month — the committee’s largest investment into Democratic state parties in history.
  • The DNC is all hands on deck ahead of upcoming gubernatorial and down-ballot races in Virginia and New Jersey later this year. In Virginia, the DNC announced an initial investment of more than $1.5 million — one of the largest and earliest investments the DNC has ever made to the Virginia Democratic Coordinated Campaign in an off-year election cycle. 

The DNC’s People’s Town Halls 

In response to Republicans’ refusal to meet face to face with their constituents after plotting to rip away health care access and food assistance, the DNC, DCCC and ASDC launched the “People’s Town Halls” to engage with voters left behind by their Republican representatives.

  • Since the launch of our “People’s Town Halls,” the DNC and state parties have hosted over 140 town halls across all 50 states, mobilizing thousands of voters and volunteers.
  • These town halls have included participation from: Senators Mark Kelly, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Ruben Gallego, and Chris Murphy; Representatives Maxwell Frost, Yassamin Ansari, Jamie Raskin, Madeleine Dean and Greg Casar; among many other elected officials and local leaders.

Organizing Summer

After Republicans passed their billionaire-first budget, the DNC built an avenue to transform voters’ anger into grassroots energy through Organizing Summer. 

  • The DNC is investing in the long-term organizing we’ll need to kick vulnerable Republicans out of office and take back the House and Senate in 2026. Through Organizing Summer, we’re expanding volunteer leadership, keeping the pressure on Republicans, and turbocharging voter engagement. 
  • During the first week of Organizing Summer, the top age group of supporters getting involved was ages 18-24, for the first time ever.
  • In partnership with state parties and volunteer event hosts, the DNC has already hosted over 65 organizing events across the country this summer, including town halls, voter engagement trainings, rallies outside GOP offices, canvasses and more.
  • To meet the moment, we’re training supporters as messengers in the in-person and online spaces they already engage in: book clubs, Reddit threads, sports forums, Discord servers for their favorite video games.
    • Already, the DNC has exceeded 30,000 volunteer sign-ups and engagements in the past six months — the largest volunteer base the DNC has ever had at this point in the cycle. 

Supporting the Next Generation

  • To prepare the leaders of today and tomorrow, the DNC launched a national training program.
    • The DNC’s National Training Team works across organizations in the Democratic ecosystem, hosting multi-day intensive bootcamps to sharpen the skills of new and existing operatives, offer on-demand training opportunities for local community leaders — including hundreds of Democratic municipal officials — and provide management and leadership coaching programs in key states.

Winning the Narrative

The DNC War Room

The DNC’s new War Room expands and streamlines the DNC’s communications, research, and mobilization operations, using a “walls down” approach to aggressively lead rapid response.

  • The War Room incorporates four main pillars:
    • Expanding Democrats’ reach into new information spaces;
    • Modernizing the rapid response operation to drive aggressive daily messaging to counter the Trump administration;
    • Leveraging creative opposition tactics and an expansive research operation to put Republicans on the back foot in district and in the beltway;
    • Launching a modernized misinformation counterprogramming vertical to combat the lies from the right
      • In the 6 months since the DNC launched our FactPost account across platforms, the account has cultivated an 180% audience increase

The People’s Cabinet

While Donald Trump fills his cabinet with out-of-touch billionaires, Fox News hosts, conspiracy theorists, and unqualified loyalists, the DNC launched the “People’s Cabinet” to leverage a deep bench of qualified policy experts, national and local leaders, as well as community voices to cut through the lies and speak directly to the American people about the reality of the Trump administration’s reckless and dangerous agenda. 

We’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s much more to do:

There is no entity in the Democratic ecosystem right now that plans beyond a four-year cycle — and that needs to change, and it needs to change with us. While I’m proud of all the work we’ve already accomplished in only six months, we have to think beyond 2025, beyond the 2026 midterms, and even beyond the 2028 presidential election. 

A core tenet of my campaign for DNC Chair was Build to Win, Build to Expand, and Build to Last. We have to realign our thinking — and resources — if we want the Democratic Party to truly compete, expand our map, and build to win long-term power across the country. We can’t tinker on the edges or focus on a handful of battleground states each election cycle. We need to build long-term infrastructure in this party. That’s what we’re doing at the DNC: training volunteers, engaging voters, and building infrastructure in all 50 states that will help elect Democrats for years and even decades to come.