When Ken Martin announced his first national tour since becoming Democratic National Committee chairman, it may have come as a surprise to some that he included Missouri as one of the stops.
After all, Missouri hasn’t been a competitive presidential state since 2008. And Democrats have struggled mightily in both statewide elections and gaining ground in the legislature.
But in an interview on The Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, Martin said his party needs to stop ignoring red states like Missouri if they’re going to get out of their electoral funk. And he said that Missouri Democrats should expect tangible help from the national party in the coming months.
“We want to make sure we're getting out to red, purple and blue states,” Martin said.
Martin is the former chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party. He won a contested race to be the DNC chairman earlier this year, the first intraparty contest since Democrats lost the presidential race to Donald Trump last year.
One of the big challenges Martin and other Democratic leaders face is the party’s collapse in rural parts of the country. In Missouri, Trump and other Republicans have regularly eclipsed 80% of the vote in places like southeast and northeast Missouri — which leaned Democratic for generations.
Martin said building more momentum in rural parts of the country was “a big part of the reason why I ran for DNC chair.”
“We have 3,244 counties in this country right now, and a lot of them don't have Democratic Party leadership,” Martin said. “And so, we have to just get back to basics of building organization in all parts of our country, not leaving any ZIP code or area behind.”
That type of infrastructure-building work will help Democrats make gains, he said.
“Look at the end of the day, you can't turn a red area to a purple area to a blue area unless you spend some time, energy and money there,” Martin said. “And that's true of red states and blue states, right? What we've seen is: When you don't invest in red states, they just continue to be red. You don't invest in blue areas, they start to lose vote share.”
Pushing back against Trump
Another challenge Martin is dealing with is unease among Democratic voters about how the party is combating Trump’s second-term agenda.
Without controlling the House, the Senate or the presidency, Democrats don’t have many formal methods in stopping his cabinet appointments or preventing some of his ideas from making it to his desk.
But Martin contended that Democratic outrage over how some government workers were abruptly fired or how billionaire Elon Musk sought to get access to sensitive taxpayer information showed the power of pushback.
“Because of our members of Congress and the work they've done the last two weeks, we've seen that public sentiment has started to shift away from Donald Trump,” Martin said. “He's already lost points on his approval rating. People are already souring on Donald Trump because he's not focusing on things right now that will actually help improve their lives. He said on Day 1 he was going to bring down the cost of goods and the cost of living for people in this country. He hasn't done anything.”
Martin acknowledged that Republicans have built an advantage against Democrats when it comes to social media and television presence.
“We got to get out of this idea that we should only communicate with voters in an election year,” Martin said. “People are getting information all the time because they have a smartphone. And we need to understand that they're getting their information from non-traditional information spaces.”
DNC support for Missouri
Missouri’s five voting members on the Democratic National Committee publicly supported Martin’s candidacy for chairman. And Martin spent time in 2024 helping out the Missouri Democratic Party before he announced his candidacy for the DNC’s top job.
Martin said it's realistic to expect the national party to pay attention to Missouri. That includes providing money and organizational help in the state, he said.
“The reason why is because we can't be a party just focused on seven battleground states,” Martin said. “We can't be a party that's focused on a few congressional seats.”
Martin pointed out how when he was a student at the University of Kansas, Missouri was widely seen as a purple state that flipped back and forth between the two parties. He said it is possible for Missouri Democrats to reestablish competitiveness.
“I'll continue to come back, and we'll do our part to invest here,” Martin said. “Because we're going to organize everywhere. Through the lens of when you organize everywhere, you can win anywhere.”
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
