Ken Martin
speaker
651 appearances
10 recordings
7 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 21 May
Ken Martin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 3.
Appearances
I think part of the disillusionment, John, with American politics right now, as I mentioned earlier, is that folks hear people say one thing and then do another. You know, not to keep quoting Paul, but Paul used to say, you should never separate the life you lead from the words you speak. And people see too many politicians in both parties who stand up, right?
Say one thing just to get your vote and then get into office and forget about them. That's why it was remarkable, I think, to see what we've done in Minnesota and in states like Michigan, two very purple states in the Midwest who both had slim majorities, and they led in a very aggressive way to deliver on those promises.
Well, first is to focus on year-round organizing, a permanent campaign. You know, part of the challenge and why we keep losing ground with folks, as I mentioned earlier, is we're only showing up three months before an election and asking for a vote. So the first is a year round organizing, standing up, organizing all the time. So we never stopped having conversations with voters at their door.
You know, the first conversation we have with the voter should not be asking them to vote for us, but rather What are your hopes and dreams, your aspirations for your community, right? And over time, build trust and earn their trust so we can actually ask them for their vote. Second thing I would do is really contest every race up and down the ballot, right?
We can't be a party just focused on federal races, right? And I get why Jamie had to do it. And they did a lot of great work over the four years he was there and the infrastructure involved. is much stronger than it was after the 16 election, as an example. But I would say this for me. We need a permanent campaign.
We need to start our organizing and our communications infrastructure much earlier than we ever have. And we have to make sure that we are competing up and down the ballot. in partnership with all of our 57 state parties all throughout the country. So, you know, the other thing I would do differently, and I just rolled this out this week, is build a national coordinated campaign table, right?
We haven't had a national coordinated campaign at the DNC since the mid-90s. And that's a shame because we're not tapping into... What does that look like? Could you...
Well, for me, a coordinated campaign is really bringing, just like we do in Minnesota, bringing our electoral partners and elected officials together at a table that would include allies and partners like labor and reproductive rights groups and environmental groups. We have all of these great organizations that are working in electoral spaces.
spending time, energy, and money, right, fighting for economic and social justice, fighting for our party and our candidates who are never engaged in that conversation, right? They're siloed off and they should be brought into the conversation and we should build one plan together where we coordinate our resources and really focus like a laser on how we build power together, right?
Unfortunately, right now, we have all these disparate groups out there doing their own things. It results in a lot of duplication of effort. And frankly, it does not result in us being strategically aligned in a way that helps us all accomplish the same goals, which is to elect people who share our values to office so we can actually move our agenda forward.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a very good question, right? And the reality is that you have to be intentional about this. And you have to make sure that your donors know that for us to actually turn the page here and build power, we have to have a more holistic approach on it. You can't just focus on seven battleground states, right?
What will help us win the presidency is actually winning local races and winning state legislatures and winning gubernatorial races, right? So the reality is it's all connected. And the second piece is, yeah, we do have to grow the pie, right?
And part of building a coordinated campaign where we're building a permanent campaign is realizing that we're stronger together and we should actually have shared resources where we're focus collectively on a plan to achieve the same goals.
And so when you're so disjointed and you're spending money on when the left hand and the right hand aren't talking and coordinating, you're just duplicating effort and wasting resource. So for me, it's just being more holistic about it. And is it going to be a challenge? For sure. Because it won't be the way the DC consultants and others want it to be. We're going to flip the script.
We're going to break up this cabal in D.C., and we're going to do things differently, right? And the model is states like Minnesota, states like Wisconsin, states like Michigan, right? States that are building here in the Midwest and winning, right, in very purple states by actually bringing people together and focusing more holistically.
Look, if you want to keep losing, keep doing things the way they are. Now, as it relates to raising money, there's no state that's raised as much money as I have. In addition to raising $220 million for my state party, I served on the Harris-Walls Finance Committee, raised over $6 million for the presidential campaign, did the same thing in 2016.
Raising money is not going to be a challenge for me. The most important thing is how we spend it. And if we're not spending it on winning, then we shouldn't be spending it. So here's to all those consultants in DC.
I hope they're listening to me because if you bring me a plan that doesn't help us win elections, you're going to have to go pound sand because you're not going to get a contract from the DNC. And that's how we built it here. And it's important not just to help us win, but it's important for those donors who are giving us money to have a sense on how the DNC chair is going to approach this.
We're not going to invest in things that don't help us win elections. No more contracts to just line consultants' pockets. As I've said, I'm here to win the U.S. House back, not help a consultant build a new house.
Well, look, I mean, this is a little bit of a challenging one because I do want to get dark money out of politics. I've long supported Ending Citizens United and making sure that we find a way to actually overhaul the campaign finance system so these campaigns and elections aren't as expensive. I mean, we've spent $2.5 billion on a presidential campaign, over $10 billion, by the way, John,
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