Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin is facing backlash and calls to resign after reports surfaced over the weekend about several ways the DNC is coping with its financial straits.
The DNC is currently gearing up for both a contentious 2026 midterm election season, in which it is trying to gain control of the House and the Senate from their current Republican majorities, and a 2028 presidential election season, in which it hopes to take back control of the White House. The elections are assured to be competitive fights, but the DNC is going into it with over $2 million in debt, while the Republican National Committee has over $128 million in cash.
The fundraising pressure is building against Martin, who, as part of a violent outburst of frustration, threw a phone at a DNC staffer’s desk in early July, a detail that was reported by The New York Times. Martin has reportedly been anxious about maintaining his role at the helm of the cash-strapped committee, as the DNC has made several apparent adjustments to deal with its financial crunch ahead of the midterm elections, and Martin has dodged several calls for leadership change.
As part of its report on Martin’s phone-throwing incident, which resulted in a human resources complaint against the chairman, the New York Times also detailed that the DNC has been asking vendors to delay billing until after the 2026 midterm elections.
“This is nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes,” DNC Executive Director Roger Lau said regarding the delayed billing requests in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner.
The DNC declined to comment on the phone-throwing incident.
NOTUS also reported over the weekend that the DNC put its Washington, D.C., headquarters up as collateral in 2025 to help the committee obtain a multimillion-dollar line of credit amid financial stress. A DNC official told the Washington Examiner in a statement that “this is not new.”
“The loan documents were publicly released in November, and the DNC’s building was also used as collateral in our prior lines of credit in 2019, 2018, 2014, and many other years,” the DNC official said.
The DNC official pointed the Washington Examiner to a Substack article from Martin about the DNC’s current financial status, in which Martin wrote that “the current DNC has raised the most money of any DNC without the White House in the 198-year history of the Democratic Party.”
“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.
However, several Democrats have voiced concerns over whether Martin is still the right person to lead the DNC into the 2026 and 2028 crunch time.
“Ken Martin must resign. As Democrats, we have become too captured by failing strategies. We must fail forward, and pivot. The urgency of this moment will not reward—and our children will not forgive—torpidity,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) said in a statement on X, pointing to the NOTUS report.
DNC CASH CRUNCH PERSISTS DESPITE DEMOCRATIC MOMENTUM HEADING INTO 2026
Former DNC vice chairman David Hogg, who has feuded with Martin since he won and then left his position, also pointed to the New York Times report over the weekend in his criticism of Martin.
“We shouldn’t have someone leading the DNC who can’t raise money. Let alone someone who throws stuff at staff and can’t raise money,” Hogg wrote on X.