Today, new DNC Chair Ken Martin kicks off his first official tour as DNC Chair, traveling to blue, purple, and red states across the country to underscore his commitment as DNC Chair that Democrats will go everywhere and compete everywhere. In the coming days, Chair Martin will visit Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri.

Chair Martin’s first tour hinges on the principles he’s lived by during his tenure as Chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party where his electoral track record is 25-0 — that Democrats must organize everywhere, compete everywhere, and build locally while keeping our strongholds.

See coverage as Chair Martin kicks off his tour below: 

NBC News: New DNC chair kicks off multistate tour as he takes over the party

By: Ben Kamisar

• Ken Martin, the newly installed chair of the Democratic National Committee, is kicking off his first major trip as party leader in an effort for the organization to “get out of D.C.”

• Martin’s trip, which begins Monday, will bring him to key swing states including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the blue state of Illinois and two red states, Texas and Missouri, according to details of the trip shared with NBC News. The stops on the trip will include a meeting with the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, meetings with the state Democratic Party chairs in Illinois and Missouri, and door-knocking for Democratic state House candidate Dan Goughnour ahead of his March special election outside of Pittsburgh.

• “It’s time for the DNC to get out of D.C. — that means getting out of our comfort zone, having tough but honest conversations with voters, and showing that we’re willing to fight for people. Democrats will win by organizing everywhere, competing across the ballot in every community, and uniting working families from all backgrounds,” Martin told NBC News in a statement.

• He went on to criticize President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, arguing they have a plan to “give trillions of dollars to billionaires by cutting things like health care for kids, seniors and rural communities — and we can’t let that happen.”

• “It’s time for Democrats to show up in all 3,244 counties — red, purple, blue — to make our case,” Martin added.
  
• “We need to start getting out there right now, when the stakes are so high. If we’re not willing to start the fight right now against Donald Trump, and he’s already failing the American people, no one’s going to believe that we’re going to fight for them when they put us in power,” he said.

• “So we’re going to be aggressive about litigating the case against Donald Trump. We’re going to be aggressive about standing up a war room to get back against the misinformation and disinformation campaigns that we’ve already seen in the last two weeks,” Martin said. “And we’re going to make sure that we start the planning process of getting ready for ’25, ’26 and then, of course, ’28.”

Chair Martin on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

WATCH HERE

Jonathan Lemire: You certainly have a big job ahead of you, after what happened in November that has left a lot of Democrats and Democratic donors really despairing. To start, what’s job one?

Chair Martin: Right now, first off is the tour that’s kicking off today, actually, which I’m really excited about. When I ran I said we need to get the DNC out of D.C. And someone said, what, do you mean moving the headquarters from D.C.? No, it’s a mindset change. It’s really focusing back on the states, building a 57 state party strategy, up and down the ballot, contesting every race in all 3,244 of our counties. We have to be organizing everywhere, which is, by the way, the name of this tour. We’re going to be talking with voters, with union members, with farmers, door knocking for candidates, holding listening sessions throughout those red, purple, and blue states that we’re visiting this week. We need to get the DNC out of D.C., out of the Beltway, reconnecting our message back with voters. 

That’s job number one, right? So many parts of our coalition left us this last election cycle, right? We know that, from Latino voters to working class households, to young voters, to women. You can go down the list. The only two groups that we over performed with in the last election cycle were wealthy households and college-educated voters. That’s a damning indictment on the Democratic Party. We got to do a better job. So that’s why we’re getting out there to these states this week to reconnect our message to the voters.

Al Sharpton: Let me ask this: when you look at the fact that a lot of people complain that the Democrats were not punching back, that we’re not fighting, and that they and they were not feeling represented — when you say you’re going to throw punches, which is welcomed by a lot of people that I talk to around the country, how do we throw punches that are effective without looking reckless at the same time, and empower local candidates they may have to be throwing different punches?

Chair Martin: Well, it’s a great question, and let me say this. In 2016 someone said to me, you know, the Republicans are shameless and the Democrats are spineless. The first thing we need to do is we need to stand up, if we’re not willing to right now, resist Donald Trump and JD Vance and Elon Musk when the stakes are so high for the American people, how in the hell are anyone in this country going to believe that we would stand up and fight for them if they put us back in power? We have to resist. We can’t just live in that space of perpetual resistance. We need to very strenuously resist Donald Trump, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but we also need to give people a sense of who we are as Democrats — what we believe in and what we’re fighting for. 

But as it pertains to the resistance, look at what Democratic attorneys general are doing, like my friend Keith Ellison from Minnesota, right they’re leading the charge right now and taking on Donald Trump and JD Vance and Elon Musk through the courts right? Our Democratic congressional members are using the power of their platform to move public sentiment against these cuts that we’re seeing in the federal government right now, and it’s local elected officials across the country right now who are giving hope to communities who are being ripped apart by this administration right now that they’re going to be safe. Democrats are standing up, they’re ready for this fight, and I’m happy to lead them.