Who Might Be the Next Chair of the Democratic Party?

This article was updated on Feb. 1.

As the Democratic Party reels from devastating losses — in the presidential contest, the race to control the Senate and its bid to regain control of the House — its national committee is searching for a new chair. Whoever lands that critical role will be charged with shepherding the party out of the woods and into a new era.

Jaime Harrison, the current chair of the Democratic National Committee, has decided not to seek re-election. The party’s 448 committee members, who include party officials and politicians from across the country, are voting on his replacement on Saturday.

The post has long been considered among the worst in American politics, with a need to satisfy a broad range of donors, elected officials and interest groups, and a tendency to be blamed if things go awry.

The race is crowded. Eight people have enough support — 40 signatures — from D.N.C. members to qualify for the ballot.

Here’s a look at the Democrats running to lead their party, including two candidates who have emerged as leading contenders for the role.

Who are the front-runners?

Ken Martin

Mr. Martin, one of several vice chairs of the D.N.C., is also the longtime leader of Minnesota’s Democratic Party. The state’s governor, Tim Walz, has endorsed Mr. Martin’s candidacy.

Mr. Martin has an extensive track record in behind-the-scenes party leadership. He has led the state party in Minnesota since 2011 and became a national vice chair in 2017. He is also president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, which lobbies the national committee on behalf of the state parties.

Mr. Martin has expressed interest in having Democrats contest every race on every ballot across the country, something no party currently does. He recently told The Times that the party’s next leader would have an opportunity to “reimagine the D.N.C.” while “trying to get at what happened in this last election.”

Ben Wikler

Mr. Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party since 2019, joined the race in early December. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, backed him in January, and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker, later followed.

“Ben Wikler has what Democrats need right now — proven results,” Mr. Schumer said in a post on social media.

Mr. Wikler is a popular figure among Democrats in Wisconsin, a political battleground. Some Democrats credit him for helping Joseph R. Biden Jr. win the state in 2020, and for helping Gov. Tony Evers secure re-election in 2022. He formerly was a senior adviser at MoveOn, a progressive advocacy group.

In an interview with The New York Times in December, he declined to say whether he thought President Biden should have sought re-election and which state he believed should go first in the 2028 presidential primary.

“My platform in this race is unite, fight, win,” Mr. Wikler said. “Uniting starts not with recriminations but with reckoning and with curiosity and data. And then you use all that to inform the way that you fight the next battle.”

Who else is running?

Martin O’Malley

Mr. O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, was the race’s first entrant.

He has a long record of public service, getting his start on the Baltimore City Council before becoming the city’s mayor in 1999. During his tenure as governor, an office he held from 2007 to 2015, he led the Democratic Governors Association.

In 2023, President Biden picked him to lead the Social Security Administration. Mr. O’Malley resigned from the post on Nov. 29.

In an interview with The New York Times, he said that he was a “turnaround manager,” and that the party should advance “economic arguments” to court voters.

“We face enormous challenges and a lot of soul-searching,” he said. “We need to focus on fixing the problem, and not the blame.”

Faiz Shakir

Mr. Shakir joined the race for chair in mid-January, just over two weeks before voting was set to begin. He said he thought other candidates were uninspiring, merely proposing procedural changes rather than a bold vision to reshape the party.

Mr. Shakir, who led Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, said in an interview that if elected he would redefine the Democratic Party as the party of the working class. The Democratic brand was “tarnished,” he said, and needed help.

“We are rebuilding trust with people who don’t believe the Democratic Party has been there when it matters most to them,” he said.

Nate Snyder

Mr. Snyder, who worked in the Department of Homeland Security under President Biden and President Barack Obama, entered the D.N.C. chair race in December. He is considered a long shot.

Many of Mr. Snyder’s positions, including his emphasis on a “people-powered movement,” are more progressive than other candidates’. He promises to rebuild the party’s support from working-class and rural voters and to increase transparency in party fund-raising, according to his website.

“Education, loan forgiveness, putting food on the table, fighting for the little guy — we’ve sort of lost our way on that,” Mr. Snyder told Reuters.

Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson, a self-help author who has staged two long-shot Democratic campaigns for president, joined the D.N.C. race in late December.

A onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Williamson, 72, said in an open letter to the committee membership that the Democratic Party needed to understand the “emotional” force of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appeal and “create the energy to counter it.”

Quintessa Hathaway

Ms. Hathaway, a former congressional candidate, announced a campaign for the role in early January. Like some of the race’s other late entrants, she faces steep odds.

In 2022, Ms. Hathaway lost a bid to unseat Representative French Hill, a Republican, in the Arkansas district that includes Little Rock. Her D.N.C. campaign platform emphasizes civil-rights policies and Democratic organizing in the Southeast.

Jason Paul

Jason Paul, a lawyer and political strategist from Newton, Mass., began his bid for chair in December.

Mr. Paul has worked in local politics across New England, and in 2014, he lost a Democratic primary race for state representative in Connecticut.

According to his website, he supports a “subscription-based fund-raising model” for the party.

Who’s dropped out?

James Skoufis

Mr. Skoufis, a relatively unknown New York state senator who began a long-shot bid to be the party’s leader in late November, dropped out of the race in mid-January.

Mr. Skoufis, 37, has served in the New York State Legislature for 12 years, representing Orange County in the Hudson Valley. He initially saw his “outsider” status as an advantage in the D.N.C. race.

“We tried the D.C. Beltway thing, we tried the decades-long operative thing, we tried the sort of party machine thing over and over and over and over again,” Mr. Skoufis told The Times. “And here we are.”

But without established relationships with committee members, Mr. Skoufis struggled to secure votes for party chair. When he dropped out, he endorsed Mr. Martin.

Reid J. Epstein, Katie Glueck and Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.